Getting More Hits on Your Corporate Blog

Increasing traffic to your corporate blog helps you raise awareness of your company and its products and services. You do have to be committed to your blog to make it successful, though.

Using your company blog in your public relations campaign is not as easy as slapping some copy on your website and hoping people will read your brilliant posts. There are several ways you can increase traffic to your corporate blog and take advantage of the blogging craze so you can attract new customers.

Update Your Corporate Blog Frequently

Your company blog is not your personal diary that you can update when it’s convenient for you. There’s nothing more deadly to any blog than one that hasn’t been updated or a post that reads, “It’s been a while since I last wrote…”

Set a schedule and stick to it. Not only does this help you blog frequently, your visitors will know when to expect updates on your blog.

Do Not Use Your Corporate Blog for Sales Pitches

You can indirectly promote your company and products through your blog but don’t use your blog as a direct sales tool. Keep your content genuine and don’t use the space as a blatant advertisement for what you’re selling.

Your goal is to build repeat visitors. Using your blog as commercial space will do the opposite. Your blog is a powerful public relations tool, which means it’s not a giant billboard for you to spread your advertising message.

Find Your Niche, Don’t Generalize

People blogging about their personal lives can be all over the place in their blog. One day they may blog about their favorite TV show and the next day they share their story of how they couldn’t decide between a frozen pepperoni pizza or a TV dinner at the grocery store.

That’s fine for them. They’re not you, a company trying to make a living selling your products.

Do people really want to know what you’re up to in your daily life? Unless you’re a big name, think Bill Gates or George Clooney, then the answer is going to be no.

Your blog will better serve your potential customers and your business if you use it to blog about topics relevant to your industry. If you own a hardware company, for example, a blog focusing on home improvement projects will help increase traffic. Even following up with your customers about their own home improvement projects through pictures and interviews will also make your blog more popular.

Engage Readers by Encouraging Feedback

Your blog readers have opinions. You can encourage people to keep coming back and get involved by engaging your users. Type your blog post and then ask readers for their comments on the story or what they think about a certain topic.

Use polls and your message board posts to get people communicating. If you accept reader questions, answer those questions on your blog and open up the floor to others to give their own answers on what the reader has asked.

Spin Searched Subjects Into Relevant Content for Your Corporate Blog

What’s hot right now? Are these subjects something you can spin into your own blog’s topic?

Using our hardware store as an example, hurricane season results in a lot of searches. Spin those searched subjects into content for your blog. Tips on preparing your home for a hurricane or even following a city’s rebuilding through your industry’s eyes can be excellent content that drives visitors to your site.

Look at the most searched content carefully and be creative when coming up with ideas related to those popular searches. You don’t want to go too far overboard but you can spin a lot of subjects you wouldn’t normally think to cover. Look to Google Trends and Yahoo Buzz to see what the top search words are this week.

These tips are over and above the SEO techniques that you must use get your corporate blog to rank high on Google for the relevant keyword. The difference is that these techniques take over from the point where a reader sees your blog listed in the search results, and then goes on to read your corporate blog.