Successful companies maintain relationships with people who matter to them. These include customers, suppliers, business analysts and members of the media, to name a few.
These relationships involve conversations. While face-to-face chats with customers might seem ideal, most companies can’t bring this idyllic notion to real life (outside of costly initiatives like focus groups). That’s why they advertise, send email blasts, publish newsletters, press releases and take many other traditional “corporate communications” tactics.
Then along came social media, enabling businesses to finally have many more of the conversations they always wanted to have.
Unlike Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts, blogs are the only social media platform that allow for total control, from branding to length of messages and beyond. Companies can be “themselves” and people can comment on what they see. Along with other social media tools, blogs help companies get to know their customers better.
Blogging is not a quick fix. It does provide benefits long-term, though, so if you have the patience, use blogs to help you achieve the following:
- promote your company, your expertise, your reputation
- lure reporters who need to interview experts in your industry
- feed into your web site
- express your individual voice
Read more about how businesses use blogs in these linked articles: