WRITING AND POSTING THROUGH BLOGS
The biggest strength of blogs is in establishing dialogue with readers. For that dialogue to be successful, you need a blogger whose style, personality, and knowledge meet the needs of the audience. Keeping the writing in your blog short, to the point, and useful. You don’t need to finely craft every word; in fact, levity and a casual, friendly style can serve you well.
Blog writing is all about openness, honesty, and information. Blog writing isn’t formal, so keep the tone conversational and personal. A blog is not the place for business jargon or marketing propaganda.
Posting new material often Most blogs are organized reverse-chronologically for a reason — it’s so you can’t miss the latest post. The blogging format lives and dies on current information. Current doesn’t mean every couple of weeks. Current means posting often, even multiple times daily if you can swing it. Many bloggers post several times a day; most post at least a few times a week.
Posting religiously has its benefits as well:
� Your readers return more often, because they know they’re likely to find new information.
� Your blog is more likely to show up more frequently in search engine results lists as well. Quantity is definitely your friend in this medium.
Don’t let your quality slip in your quest to post regularly. You may drive readers away.
Every company can benefit from knowing what its customers want, what they like about its products and services, and what they don’t like. Getting that feedback can be a nightmare, though. Focus groups are costly and time con¬suming, and can be conducted only in areas where you can physically locate a group of appropriate people. Surveys are also time-intensive, nothing to blink at costwise, and are hard to get people to return to. Blogs can help you gather feedback from your customers more cheaply and faster than almost any other technique. By tracking the feedback you get on your own blog and reading what is said about you on other blogs, you always have a current picture of just how your company is doing in the public’s perception.