The added value of corporate blogs

Well, as most of you know by now, I do not need to tell you the value a blog can offer for your SEO strategy. Many bloggers continue to write about the positive effects of blogging on external weblogs, but there are only a few that argue for companies to start their own blogs. Therefore I want to provide some of the major advantages for companies to start their own corporate weblog. In the first part I want to elaborate on the main advantages of corporate blogs. The real SEO advantages I want to take into account in the second part.

Advantage 1: Personal touch

It is argued that many companies only provide static information on the internet and that many visitors don’t get an actual feeling about the company when visiting a website. When a website has a weblog or news section visitors can feel a personal touch to the website and also find it more actual than when not having a news or blog section. Visitors feel that they now can actual reach the company and see what it has been up to.

Advantage 2: Explanation

Although many companies try to explain their strategy to all their stakeholders through the static content of a website they sometimes feel that they are restricted to the amount of information they provide. That is so true, since within the static content you do not want to add too much text, since nobody is going to read all of it obviously. Now we can argue that nobody ever reads a long blog either, but through a blog you can elaborate on specific items a bit more than you could do in a static content. Nobody likes too many menu items, do we? The advantage of a blog is that you are not restricted to the menu items and can therefore explain more in-depth.

Advantage 3: Generating trust

Deriving from the personal touch, as well as the explanation a company can establish trust at his visitor. This is further enhanced when visitors can communicate with each other on the blog via replies, kinda like Amazon.

Advantage 4: Being authentic and flexible

In small companies this perhaps happens less often, but sometimes it can be difficult to change content on a static website. You first have to call the head of your department, he has to call the head of the IT department and the head of the IT department will tell somebody from his department to change it. When having a corporate blog the speed can be improved. Furthermore by adding more content your company starts to become authentic in comparison with its competitors.

Advantage 5: Internal collaboration

A blog can enhance internal collaboration because of several reasons. First, because more employees are involved they can get the feeling of a better work surrounding. Second, the information is spread more easy, so everybody knows the status of current projects. Third, also because the information the corporate blog provides, other employees get to know the knowledge of others. Finally, no more need for useless printed memo’s and a large inbox on the mail accounts.

As mentioned above in the next part I will elaborate more on the SEO usages of internal blogs. From advantages 1 to 5 we can conclude that a corporate blog can have some good advantages for the visitors of the corporate website. And isn’t the objective for a SEO strategy to get more visitors and to keep them on your site. As well as that those visitors in the end must result in customers which can only be established if they want to commit to your company?