Corporate Blogging

The Future of Websites

by Andrew Hanelly · September 20, 2011

When you’re talking about the future it’s hard not to get carried away. The future of almost everything seems exciting. Futuristic cars, houses, and of course, websites, will seemingly be able to perform almost any function, thanks to creativity and advances in technology. So our imagination runs wild. And we sound like Dave Gelernter sounded in a 1997 BusinessWeek article, when he discussed the radical notion of ”lifestreams” — a flood of data from an individual person that shared every detail of their life.

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How To (Successfully) Break The First Rule Of Social Media

by Ilana Rabinowitz · April 13, 2011

Rules can be helpful, but they can also close your mind to possibilities and immobilize you. When it comes to social media, the first rule you’re likely to be told is this:

“Never start a social media initiative until you know your objectives.”

Not only do I believe that it is possible to break this rule (and still be successful), but in two situations, you are better off if you ignore the rule. The first situation is when you are so stymied with how to get started and fearful of getting it wrong, that you end up sitting on the sidelines. The second is if you have tried using social media but are disappointed in the results because you thought you’d get thousands of Twitter followers in short order or have your video go viral, ignore the rule and start over without expectations.

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What Can You Expect From Your Corporate Blog?

by Ilana Rabinowitz · March 24, 2011

The first rule of measurement is know your objectives so you know what to measure. That said, it’s a challenge to decide on objectives for a blog when you don’t know what the possibilities are. At Lion Brand Yarn Company, we outlined objectives before we launched our blog in 2008, but what we discovered was that we would benefit in ways that we did not imagine.

Of all forms of social media, blogging can be the most time intensive. It is also a tool that requires a sustained, long-term effort. But therein lies the power of this tool. Developing a rich bank of content that serves our audience has been an important asset to our company. Here are five benefits of blogging that we have enjoyed:

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What To Do When Goliath Comes To Town

by Eric Brown · January 18, 2011

I have been thinking about content marketing lately and when we may see a change in the current environment. As a society, I don’t think we are very keen at understanding highs and lows or the top or bottom of trends and what is changing around us. For any readers old enough to remember, when you used to pull your car into a “filling station” someone pumped your gas, cleaned your windshield and checked your oil. Somewhere that faded away, never really to be seen again. And no one asked if that was okay, it just happened.

Corporate Blogging

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Integrate Social Media … In Real Life

by Andrew Hanelly · January 6, 2011

There’s often a gap between the idea of social media (what can happen in your head) and the practice of social media (what happens in real life).

Maybe your “social media engagement strategy” seemed more solid in the PowerPoint presentation. The “monitoring station” seemed to work better during discussion meetings. And the enthusiasm has vanished from the honeymoon that followed your organization’s marriage to social media.

In other words, the ideas all sounded good, but getting the organization to change overnight was more difficult than it seemed it would be. No one actually wanted to digest a pie in the sky social media initiative so we just sort of took a bite, smiled, then spat it out when no one was looking.

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Can Your Company Be Customer-Centric If Your Blog Isn’t?

by Jason Falls · December 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Ian Greenleigh, the Social Media Manager for Bazaarvoice.

I’ve written a lot about what makes a corporate blog successful and why most fail miserably. Infrequent posts. Content inconsistency. Lazy editors. Buried calls-to-action. Take your pick—these mistakes are all symptomatic of impending blog disaster, but none alone are a death sentence. So what is?

The curse of company-centric content

: Image by Vicki’s Pics via Flickr

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A Corporate Blogging Tool Worth Blogging About

by Jason Falls · April 21, 2010

If you are a regular reader here at Social Media Explorer, you know that I’m a strategic advisor to Compendium Blogware and have been involved in a corporate blogging research project with Compendium CEO Chris Baggott, corporate blogging expert Debbie Weil and fellow social media marketing practitioner Jay Baer. Our research to date has shown that as many as 80 percent of corporate blogs report that the vast majority of their traffic comes from first-time visitors, erasing the myth that we blog for some loyal community.