Tonight I had a great time at Confluence, an Indianapolis networking event, where we reunited a team to speak on the Do's and Don'ts of Corporate Blogging. I was joined by fellow industry professionals Rhoda Israelov, Rodger Johnson, Kyle Lacy and Kevin Hood.
There were minor differences in agreement over command and control of a corporate blog, but I believe all of us overwhelmingly agreed that blogging, as a medium, is becoming a strategy that's every bit as important (and perhaps more profitable) than office email. Those are my words – not those of the panel.
Host Erik Deckers closed off the conversation with a question:
What's the one key piece of advice that everyone should remember when starting their corporate blog?
Closing the panel out, I agreed with the others that it all starts with great keyword research, fantastic content, writing about your customers, and being honest and transparent. All of the responses were first rate, so I took the opportunity to close with simply reminding everyone that there needs to be a visible, simple path to engagement on the blog.
I can't tell you how many times I visit a blog and am interested in meeting the blogger behind it, or even buying the product or service, but there's nothing obvious on the page that points me in the right direction. Every business blog should have a name, contact form, phone number, address – as well as a few well-designed calls to action that afford the opportunity to register and get in touch with the company.
There's even some unconfirmed discussions on the web that Google even picks up on sites that list their postal address on their site. With Google targeting trust more and more, it makes sense that a site with a valid street address may be trusted above one without.
