This post is part of the Recruiting.com Blog Swap. The author is Jim Durbin
of StlRecruiting.com.
We all know that blogs enable conversations between corporate monoliths and the freedom loving masses that make up the public. Someone, somewhere, figured out that a comment feature allows for a rich interaction between MegaCorp's chief executives and Bob the Customer, who spends approximately $11 with MegaCorp every quarter.
This interaction is the key, not only to profitability, but to the very survival of MegaCorp in a Web 2.0 21st Century.
Except that it isn't.
I am a business blog consultant, much like Gautam. Like Gautam, I left a career in employment to start my own consulting business because I saw that business blogs had a real demand that was not being met. This is probably giving away company secrets, but the truth about blogs is they are a wonderful tool that can be used in numerous ways other than enabling the CEO
to carry on a conversation with a customer.
Use #1:
Press Release Generator:
Do you know that News button on websites that sits between About Us and Services? You click the News button, and are whisked to a page with press releases and announcements, usually dated 2 years ago and never relevant.
Imagine using blog software to allow your Public Relations department or Marketing department the ability to push-button publish relevant industry and company information in a blog format, but without actually calling it a blog. You get the SEO results, the individual entries to send out, and the ease of updating content without involving several developers.
Use #2:
Job Board:
One of the problems with using job boards or scrolling software to post your positions is the individual entries aren't visible to search engines. If companies used blogs to post their jobs, they could organize the jobs, give each job an individual page, and create RSS feeds for candidates to put in their readers. Looking to hire Java developers? Have a Java Developer feed that allows your candidates to check your open positions from their desktop
instead of hoping they will come back to your site.
Use #3
Trade Show Announcement
Are you a company that markets primarily through trade shows? Use a blog to announce which trade shows you will be at, what you are presenting, and encourage people to come on by your booth. This has the SEO benefit mentioned above, allows website readers to know where they can find you, and allows you to prep people both before and after the conference.
The beauty of each of these uses of blogs is you don't have to call them blogs. The name doesn't matter - the results do. Far too many companies think a blog is about exposing all of their faults to ridicule. That's not the case. The blog is just a tool, and the more we help companies generate results from these tools, the more likely they are to feel more comfortable with the blogging public in general.
Free your mind, and the blog ideas will follow.
About the author:
Jim Durbin is the Director, Corporate Communication for Durbin Media Group, an interactive marketing firm specializing in blog consulting. He blogs at BrandStorming for blog marketing, and StlRecruiting.com for online employment.
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