Considering a corporate blog? Of course, what forward-thinking, progressive company looking to thrive in “Recession Obsession” isn’t. (That’s a statement, not a question.)

A corporate blog can be a phenomenal piece of marketing for your company. It allows you to give your company a voice “outside” of your marketing - one that is more casual and real. It allows you to gain insight from feedback posted by fans and naysayers alike - and respond to that feedback by  answering the charges head on and using the information to evolve your company.

I hear you saying there’s a downside: it’s more work on your plate. And then the blog wil likely not get the priority it deserves, and will not get regular posts.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

You will find that most successful corporate blogs are written by more than one author in an organization. Take the Dell Blog - Direct2Dell - for example. Not one author but several from different departments in Dell. Each one an expert on their own topics. Or WalMart’s Check Out Blog. Same scenario. Even the Single Throw Blog has everyone involved.

The days of when all comments must come from the President of the company are over. Allowing a “Corporate Blog Team” the opportunity to come together with the same goals, presenting highly relevant content from the “experts” in your company will provide an environment where everyone contributes to the growth ofthe company and fosters your marketing message. 

BUT - there’s always a BUT - you need to create this “team” and encourage their participation. And you must create guidelines. Here’s a few tips on how to get started.

1. Build the Team Who can write, who likes to write, who has a lot of knowledge and can be ecouraged to write…these are the people you want on your Blog Team!

2. Who’s in Charge Here?  Someone (or maybe even 2 people) should assume the acting ”editor-in-chief” to ensure that content meets marketing guidelines, and just generally oversea the project. All it takes is someone who will read the posts and note and issues or concerns to the author.

3. Set Some Ground Rules Have a meeting, talk about topics, what should not be in the blog…that sort of thing. Keep it simple. With the right people as authors, this should not be a huge issue.

4. Have Some Fun With It The posts need not be long. The can - and typically should - be written in a lighter more business-casual style (unless your audience is for some reason not business-casual). Pick topics that are interesting and even a tad controversial to get readers engaged and commenting.

You’ll find that sharing the content workload will make it a lot easier and provide you with a blog that is relevant, consistent and interesting. You don’t need to be the size of Dell to get more than one person involved. Gather your potential team together with some pizza for a lunch meeting and talk about it. I think you’ll find they are far more interested in corporate blogging than you think!

In an earlier post we talked about experimenting with the power of blogging and it’s reach. While the Single Throw Internet Marketing Insights blog is relatively new to the marketing world, we have found that the blog itself has already found it’s way onto the search engine databases such as Google. That’s great news, especially having achieved this in a short amount of time. But it’s nothing new…blogs have made an impact on the search engines since their launch.

What is interesting is how working with related content and a blog with far more reach, such as Godin’s blog, (one of his many blogs actually) we did find an impressive increase in traffic and to our core target, the Godin event details page on the Move Ahead 1 website, as well as an increase in conversions.

Our goal was to spread the word to the perfect target, Godin fans. What other way than to ask Godin himself for a mention. That mention linked to the Move Ahead 1 page. In combination with the mentions and links in this blog, we were able to put a targeted message in front of the right viewers.

Part two comes with watching the propagation through search engines so we can reach these same viewers at their time of need: when they are searching for an Internet marketing seminar or Godin live event. With this, we test the powers of an organic program and the potential of increased speed in reaching this space using linking and blogs. So keep an eye out for the results.

Coming this weekend: The Google update! Stay tuned for information and comments. There’s a ton of news out there already, but the new “Jagger” roll out won’t happen this weekend, according to Matt Cutts. Til then

The power of blogging is being tested today with one of the best bloggers out there. Here’s the story…We are working with Move Ahead 1 to market an event featuring speaker Seth Godin. For those of you that are saying “Seth who?…” I say “time to wake up.” To be in any form of business that requires sales or marketing (please name one that doesn’t) you SHOULD know the name. Click here to see Godin’s books on Amazon then come back and finish reading this story…

We are working with to market an event featuring speaker . For those of you that are saying “Seth who?…” I say “time to wake up.” To be in any form of business that requires sales or marketing (please name one that doesn’t) you SHOULD know the name. to see then come back and finish reading this story…He’s also produced several e-books and uses his blog to distribute ideas to the world. Faithful followers, like me, have a hard enough time reading all he has to say…Imagine what it takes to get the ideas out there in an intelligible manner?

“Blogs to distribute ideas”…there’s the hook. So I said to myself, “Self,” you always have to say that, “let’s distribute information about the event via blogs. Godin himself would certainly approve of the concept.” Then I thought further…”what better way to get the ball rolling but to ask Godin himself to participate. And lo and behold, here’s a link to the mention on Godin’s main blog.

So for you fans of Godin, here’s an active test in progress. Link to this blog or better yet, link to Seth’s.

Assimilate or Differentiate:
a Good Marketing Campaign Means a Little Bit of Both

I spend the earlier part of most Sunday mornings cranking out cup after cup of great coffee from our Melitta One to One brewer* with a pile of the weekend’s newspapers building up between me and my sleeping Lab, Spencer, and the TV news shows mumbling in the background. Each Monday I share with my co-workers some of the things I came across. Now you become the lucky receivers of this same “shared knowledge.” Granted I am forming some opinions here, some of which you, or even my team, may not share. But that’s OK. That’s one of the beauties of the Internet: you can choose the information you which to share or to glean.

The New York Times’ What’s Online section in Saturday’s paper mentioned snippets one after the other that I thought presented an interesting opposition. In the first citation, Designs for Blogging, it’s noted that usability expert Jakob Nielsen, whom I am an admitted follower of, is now offering up a list of the Top 10 Design Mistakes made by Bloggers. His basic intention is to note that users must be able to grasp the articles information by reading the headline. OK, seems simple and fair enough on a basic level. Nielsen provides very simple answers on how to make design and message simple for the user. Often times, as someone with a design background, these parameters are fairly confining, but looked at from a deeper level, he reminds us that design exists for the users – something that many designers forget.

The interesting part comes in the next entry call Standout Ads. Here the author, Dan Mitchell, notes how most outdoor advertising “tends to blend together in an indiscernible melange.” He notes us to take a look at the few standouts on billboardom.blogspot.com – a site devoted to displaying billboards, signage and other outdoor advertising. You’ll note some of the great billboards he mentions do require the viewer to “think” a bit.

So here’s my point. While Nielsen would like to see headlines on blogs that make more sense, we are all so flooded with information we need to find a way to standout. It’s a tough position to be in. Each day at Single Throw, we struggle with this same issue for our clients. We need to find that unique value proposition for our clients yet deliver it in a way that is both engaging and yet recognizable to the message recipient. The message cannot be so straightforward that it borders on the mediocre, yet it cannot be so far fetched that it is totally lost.

Seth Godin speaks about mediocrity in his blog posting on October 20th. The topic being something that many of us find pretty mediocre: dinner rolls. If you are a follower of Godin, he has the incredible talent of weaving insights into just about anything, including, yes, dinner rolls. What he reminds us is that the more we settle for the mediocre, the more we will get just that: mediocrity.

Example: We drive the best cars because something inspired us first to take a test drive. That “something” is often a marketing campaign. The campaign starts by somehow conveying to us that the car is the best. The dealership and salesperson should follow by doing the same. That marketing campaign and all of the “marketing” behind it (yes, your sales people are marketing) drives us (sorry for the pun) to purchase that car.

Take a look at what is popular out there and think about why. Was it a campaign that you connected with because it “spoke” to you in both a language you understand, yet inspired you to feel the pride of ownership? Was there that certain blend of clarity and creativity behind a great product that closed the deal? Hopefully, a mediocre campaign is not what drove you to make the purchase. And, hopefully, the product is truly amazing.

I leave you with this: make sure what you are selling is “the best.” Find out how you are different from your competition. From there, find the best marketing team to spread the word.

And…If you haven’t already done so, here’s an easy read on marketing differentiation: Purple Cow by Seth Godin. If you are in the NYC area, Seth Godin will be speaking at an Internet Marketing seminar in Edison, NJ (about 40 minutes from NYC) on November 17th. Get more information at Move Ahead 1’s website.

Now go sell something this week! — C

* The Melitta brewer is a great value but the Melitta coffee is…well…mediocre. It will make better coffee with better pods. Problem is, they use a non-standard size pod, so they are not easy to find. So don’t settle for mediocre coffee! I think the best are at PODhead.com. Give it a try!

Everyone is looking for an easy outlet to publish out to the world. Engage in communications of one or more to many. Blogs are the answer!

Single Throw is happy to join the frays and add yet another way for us to educate our customers and welcome new ones. So visit often…exchange ideas…let’s all learn together.