Corporate Blogs

The role of Corporate Blogs is the subject I want to look at this month. None of us can underestimate the importance of this facility for clients. Here is what this is about:

Corporate Blogs are going to replace traditional Press Releases pages on websites, Google love websites that are updated… regularly, but in a corporate context it is not often that products or services change, this means updating the websites only happens occasionally.

Corporates have therefore looked at their resources and the only area that remains obvious to update on a regular basis is their news. Then comes costs, again it may be that news doesn’t happen that often, clients are generally uninterested if the receptionist found a mouse, or employee Joe doesn’t like sugar in his coffee. So the cheap option has been to post Press Releases on the website. This means updating the website and appeasing Google and their web designers, but it also means having an on-line resource for PR and Press to reference information about the company.

The only error here is when Corporates take that further short cut and post PDF versions of their Press Releases, editors and journalists dislike PDF because they require extra steps to extract the information for ‘processing’.

However, we live in an increasingly on-line world and so this issue of posting press releases for the sack of it really needs to be questioned, does a Journalist really wait until a press release is faxed to him, where does a Journalist turn to if he wants information. Next we have to question how to put the information needed by the Journalist for him to make the best use of it.

Time is the big factor – the average time a person let alone a pressurised Journalist has to look at a website page is seconds not minutes so you need to get that information in front of him or her fast. The answer is to shorten that press release to an introduction. Many Corporates already do this for these very reasons.

Finally, if the press release is no longer going to be displayed in its full glory on the website then what is the difference in putting all those press releases onto a Blog… a place where you can properly introduce news, express opinions and also link to items of interest (a download Word Press Release if you have to).

So Corporates should be happy as they have a modern image, a new facility on their website and are able to expand their news offering. Search engines are happen because now you have changing content on the website, but also you have a new ‘separate’ site (the blog), which has links back to the main website so better rankings and finally Corporates benefit from happier CFO’s as running a Blog can be done 100% in house and does not need the input of a website designer once it is complete. Costs can be reduced.

Press Releases produced a win win situation for Corporates, but Blog go a lot further than this… they are worth it every time…

To find out how you can benefit from a blog please give us a call.