5 reasons why your startup needs a company blog
Sunday July 24, 2011 , 3 min Read
Idea log
Entrepreneurs are known to have at least two dozen ideas at the same time. Often, originally great ideas are not carried out, because they remain in the entrepreneur’s brain and sooner or later, are overrun by newer, even wilder ideas. Writing things down helps structure the ideation process and also, remember them. It also acts a sieve for ideas, as writing often helps people understand the fallacies of their ideas. Plus if you write stuff down publicly and share your thoughts, chances are good that you get feedback from your colleagues, clients and other stakeholders you didn’t think of asking. Just be careful to not give your one-billion-dollar-idea to the competition.
Teamwork
In an ideal situation, you write the blog as a team together with some skilled and talented co-workers. That will not only increase the variety and frequency of your blog posts, but also motivate them - as a team, they create something cool on the web which is different from their day jobs. If they like writing in general, they will love doing it jointly. As a next step, you might also think of letting other stakeholders write for you now and then – it will bring your clients and partners closer to the company.
Connecting with your clients
It’s in the nature of (good) blogs that they are written in a very personal tone. Some of them don’t even deal with the company’s core business. That’s great, since most clients are sick of the aggressive marketing-messages screaming “BUY IT! BUY IT!” all the time. Blogs help you to do some proper customer relationship management – build a connection with them and bind them to your company. Sooner or later, they will also buy. And come back afterwards, for even more deals.
New clients
Of course, search-engine optimization is a topic here. More pages with interesting topics, spiced with tags, will drive search-engine-traffic to your site. Also, really interesting blog posts have the chance to go at least half-viral and therefore, drive potential clients to your site via social networks.
Free (or inexpensive) publicity
Anyone can set up a WordPress blog. And if you have some skilled designers in your company, they will probably set up a cool theme for you. If not, download one for free. Unlike other marketing campaigns, blogs don’t cost you tons of money in the beginning and the system is relatively easy to set up. Of course, the sweating starts when you start writing and have to deliver good content on a regular basis. But that’s a different story altogether.
So, if you don’t have a company blog yet, do try setting one up and let us know your thoughts about it by writing to us at[email protected].
Image Courtesy: Kristina B
Stefan Mey | YourStory.in