Whether it's external or internal, a blog has become an essential part of the corporate world. External blogging brings the relationship between consumer and company to a personal level and adds up to the company's credibility. According to a recent survey, more than 12% of Fortune 500 companies blog externally.
Blogging has proven its significance as a powerful media tool, used to associate with one's consumers and market. It aids in the formation of highly influential online social communities, where people can discourse around products and services and get a chance to renounce their choice and voice. Some of the benefits of corporate blogging include:
Great exposure of your messages and in crisis handling
According to PR experts, blogging is the "transformation of PR". If the latest company news is posted, the blog can be utilized as a tool to satisfy the public's curiosities, and as an initial mean of communication. That is why blogging is sometimes considered as a great crisis handler by many companies.
A good strategy for building reputation and relationships
Blogging helps in building a brand or company's reputation for its customers, investors, and partners. By using your blog effectively you can add to the reputation of your company. In the same way, blogging is also a great source of relationship marketing. As it is wisely said, 'The more trust and familiarity between two entities, the higher the possibility of a transaction'.
Global customer service and feedback system
As blogs are in electronic form and easily accessible around the globe, they are a direct communication channel, and provide an opportunity for you to entreat feedback from your customers, and understand their needs.
Convinced?
So, if you are convinced about the benefits and already have a blog for your business, then you must be aware of the fact that having a blog for a business is not the end of the story. In fact, it's the beginning. Now starts the real adventure of making your blog popular, getting more blog comments and driving traffic to it. Before moving on lets see some of the benefits of having more blog comments:
- More comments prove your blog is alive and is popular, hence an increase in the reputation of the company.
- They show the number of subscribers and visitors you have and hence attract other people to take interest.
- More comments lead to a rapid increase in your SEO ratings for high competitive keywords.
- They prove your website's strength among the Marketing Ring of websites, while replying to commenter's links help you build a blog community.
There are a lot more impending benefits of having more comments on your blog, but to achieve this target of getting more comments can be made easy if you adopt the seven strategies that follow. Before that you must be familiar with the following important terms:
RSS (really simple syndication) Feed : RSS document (also called "feed", "web feed", or "channel") is a document in a standard format that includes full or summarized information for the subscriber. This is actually about any new post or update on the blog, which can be read using RSS readers, without having to actually visit the website or blog.
Wordpress plugins: These are customizable open-source blogware (software for blog management) scripts for the most common blogging system in the market today, WordPress. They are very useful in helping you manage your blog content. There are thousands of plugins, widgets, and Wordpress themes available on internet.
Nofollow link: It is a HTML attribute value used to tell some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index in order to avoid search engine spam. It is very important to use this tag if you have a highly active blogging community that posts comments regularly on your blog.
Seven Strategies to draw more blog comments
1. Encourage subscription
Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed or e-mail. The subscription offer should be prominent and offered at the end of the each post also. Wordpress plugins, to make such an offer, can be easily found over the internet and installed for free. Make sure you mention clearly about subscription being free.
2. Respond to comments
Replying to the comments, which can be as simple as saying thank you, always encourages the commenter. However, bloggers have a very unique scanning system and can easily mark the comments made just for the sake of it. So be careful and try to drop in a comment which adds to the conversation and generates further comments.
3. Visiting and responding to other blogs
For small and medium-scale entrepreneurs it's important to be a dynamic member of the blogsphere. This can be achieved by frequently visiting and commenting on the commenter's blogs.
4. Make your blog popular
There is a large number of link directories being used over the internet and are a great source for directing traffic towards one's blog. So make sure yours is added on a sufficient number of link directories. Also use famous socializing websites such as Facebook and Twitter to popularize your blog. This will help people find your blog easily and will direct more traffic to your blog. The more the traffic the greater are the chances of getting comments.
5. Putting open questions
Open questions always generate valuable answers. This can be done by giving some pilot idea and asking readers what they think about it. Thought-provoking ideas guarantee more comments and develop an interest in your blog.
6. Post brand reviews and questionnaires
Blogs associate a brand to the consumer at a personal level. So blogs can be used effectively for getting direct brand reviews, answering FAQs and getting to know the consumer's choices and latest trends. When questions are asked related to the brand the consumers find it as a great opportunity to give voice and comment openly.
7. Reward your commenters
It is necessary to bribe the active commenters of your blog. This motivates them keep commenting. There are multiple ways of rewarding, such as using Wordpress plugins to display five most recent comments, by highlighting a good comment, or by sending some free resources to the most frequent commenter.
There you have it, 7 tips to get your blog started on the right track in the blogosphere.
