Freelance writing for business blogs 7: Blog management
November 21st 2010 09:20
Blogging is amongst the fastest-growing areas of the interactive digital world, and the business world is embracing this powerful promotional tool quickly. New corporate blogs are appearing every day, and as a result Craig's List, freelancer.com and other web hangouts for writers are teeming with opportunities.
To win business blogging contracts, however, writers must be able to show that they understand the corporate blogging environment. You must show a potential client not only what you can write for them, but why and how that will benefit them.
In this post, we look at managing a client's corporate blog. As a corporate blogger, you do much more than write. You create reasons for the world to come to your client's blog, and then you manage their activity while they are there.
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Blog management is about working hard to create more work. The more successful your corporate blog, the more it is going to demand of you.
The rewards will be considerable. It will be time and energy you will be glad to give.
Blogging success is not measured in terms of unique visitor numbers or content quantity or award-winning graphics. These are important components, but real success is about one word: interaction.
The crucial indicator of your success as a creator of a corporate blog is the number of comments which create an interactive process. You can spin success in terms of the number of words produced and a line graph showing a slow but steady increase in visitor numbers, but nothing spells success like big comment numbers due to lively interaction.
Every time someone asks a question, it both shows someone is listening and provides an opportunity for you or your management team to engage and form a relationship.
Every time someone disagrees with a point, it is an opportunity to start an interaction which will either leave the author of the comment grateful for a clarification, or teach the rest of us something.
Every time someone expands on an issue raised in a post, a valuable dialogue can ensue.
Every time an industry issue is debated, your client's blog is the centre of attention of a lot of people who are important to their business.
This interaction separates blogs from all other forms of communication that a company may enter into. Your blogging service will include the daily management of the interactions that the blog has with its readers. From moderation of comments to following through on requests for assistance or information, these blogkeeping tasks will be performed within a timeframe that you agree with your client in advance. This will be one of the strongest selling points for your corporate blogging service.
You can also set up a protocol that ensures that comments which require in-depth responses are forwarded to the appropriate individuals within your client's organisation, and that a response is given to the originator of the comment or query within an agreed timeframe.
Get back to them quickly and with good, engaging content, and you can make a friend. Fail to get back to them quickly, or respond with trite or irrelevant material, and you've lost them forever.
Comments are the lifeblood of a corporate blog, and managing those comments — optimising the benefits which flow from interaction — is a crucial function of the blogger's role.
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Comment by Chris Champion
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Money Whither
I agree that blogging is an effective marketing tool, but that's a separate issue from cash generation, as area where I think blogging is widely misunderstood.
What's often not understood is that making good money from blogs involves the creation of unique and high-quality content. That involves talent and hard work. Second, those looking for commercial blogging success will need to spend more time marketing their blog than writing it.
You probably knew all that, but I never waste an opportunity to spread this message and put blogging into perspective.
Thanks for visiting,
Chris