No One's Going to Read Your (Corporate) Blog Unless You Read This

So you’re interested in starting a corporate blog. Now what? You already know how it generates sales, but the real questions is…where do you start? And how do you ensure that people are actually going to read your blog (because company blogs are inherently boring, right?)

Don’t worry, I’m going to answer all of those questions and more. As long as you follow my advice from the FAQs below, you’ll have more readers than you can imagine.

1. How many posts do you need to publish before you launch your blog? – You shouldn’t wait to launch your blog. As soon as you release your first post, you should launch.
2. How often should you blog? – The more often you blog, the more traffic you will get. Try to blog at least once a week. Keep in mind, though, consistency is more important than frequency. If you decide to blog only once a month, that’s fine — just stick with it.
3. What blogging platform should we use? – I recommend WordPress. It will save you both time and money. That way you don’t need engineers to make changes for you.
4. Which department should be responsible for corporate blogging? – The marketing department should be in charge of the corporate blog.
5. Who should be blogging on a corporate blog? – The company’s founders and employees should be the ones blogging.
6. What if company employees suck at blogging? – You should have a full-time editor who reviews each post before it goes live. The editor can make modifications to the post and clean up grammar, spelling, and other issues.
7. How much does an editor cost? – A good editor will cost you around $80,000, but you can find one for a part-time position through Craigslist for only a few thousand dollars a month.
8. Who should the author of each post be? – The article should ideally be attributed to the person writing the post.
9. Can I use ghost writers? — You can use ghost writers if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it as the posts might not sound genuine.
10. What if my employees don’t have the time to write? – You can find good writers on Craigslist and Problogger.net.
11. If I hire a good writer, how much will each blog post cost me? – You will end up paying $30 to $50 for a 1,000-word blog post that is not on a technical topic. Technical topics will cost you $100 to $200 a blog post.
12. How long should my blog posts be? – Posts written for a consumer-facing blog should be between 300 to 700 words. For a business-to-business (B2B) blog, posts should be between 1,000 to 5,000 words.
13. What’s the easiest way to promote our corporate blog posts? – You should have everyone within your company sharing the posts on their social profiles.
14. Should there be an “About” page on our blog? – Yes. The About page should not be about an individual, but rather about the purpose of your corporate blog and the ways you will help your customers (or potential customers).
15. Is it okay to write about my own product or service? – Of course, it is. But if more than 10% of your blog posts are about your product or service, your blog won’t be very popular.
16. What type of content should we create? – You should create content that helps your customers and potential customers. A corporate blog should be all about giving.
17. What’s the best way to promote your product or service? – When you are blogging, you should try to mention your product offerings whenever it makes sense. In other words, feel free to do a soft sell in cases where it benefits the reader.
18. Is it okay to link out to other sites? – Yes, it is. You should also link out to other sites that back up the points you are trying to make. This helps Google determine the keywords and phrases associated with your website.
19. Should we talk about competitors on our blog? – I would try to avoid this at all cost. It will cause more problems than it will solve.
20. What happens if someone leaves a comment on our blog? – The person who wrote the post should be responding to each and every comment.
21. What happens if a negative comment is left on the blog? – Acknowledge the person’s point, apologize even if the person is wrong, and kill him or her with kindness.
22. How can we get more comments on our blog? – Write in a conversational tone by using the words “you” and “I” within the post, and wrap up the blog post with a question.
23. Are there any specific tips we should follow when creating headlines? – Try to keep your headlines around 6 words and 65 characters (or fewer). Also consider using adjectives and odd numbers within the title. Implementing all of these tips should result in more clicks.
24. Do you have any tips for writing a blog post? – Start off with an introduction, wrap up with a conclusion, and use subheadings within the body of the post to make it more readable. Also, keep your paragraphs brief – ideally under 6 lines long.
25. When should we publish our posts? – The best time to publish content tends to be at 11 a.m. EST, Monday through Thursday.
26. Should we republish our content? – No. Republishing will create duplicate content. If someone else wishes to publish your content, they will have to use a rel=canonical tag in order for you to avoid being penalized by Google.
27. What keywords should I place within my blog post? – You shouldn’t worry about keywords. Write content that benefits your readers.
28. How can I hook my readers? – Asking a question within your introductory paragraph is a great way to grab your readers’ attention.
29. How can I monetize my corporate blog? – Placing banner ads throughout your blog and linking to your corporate site will eventually generate sales. You should also collect emails and then send your email subscribers information about your products and services.
30. What is the best way to collect emails? – If you offer people a free ebook, coupon, or any sort of offer that benefits them, they will gladly give you their emails.
31. Is it a good idea to cross-promote our blog through other marketing channels? – Yes, it is. You can talk about your blog on your social profiles and link back to your social profiles from your blog.
32. Should our corporate blog be on a separate domain name? – No, you should keep it on the same domain name. Ideally, the URL of your blog should be yourdomain.com/blog.
33. What should we name our blog? – You can come up with a fancy name, but there really isn’t a need. I would just call it “blog.” It’s simple, and everyone will know what it is.
34. Are there any legal issues we should be concerned about when blogging? – Yes. You should consider creating a terms of service document and a privacy policy for your blog. You also need to ensure that the pictures you use within your blog are not copyrighted.
35. Where can we find images for our blog? – You can find royalty-free images on Flickr, or you can purchase images from stock photography sites like Fotolia.

Conclusion

Don’t let anything stop you from blogging. It can help grow your company and become the number one traffic source and lead generation channel for your business, much like it has for each of my businesses.

The best part about having a corporate blog is that it will help generate more traffic to your main site. All of the blog’s backlinks and social shares will carry over to your corporate site and help it to rank better on Google.

By Neil Patel