Digital Marketing Blog

How Business Blogging Can Help Fortune 500 Brands – Part 1

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The fact is Fortune 500 companies are far less likely to blog than other companies. According to a study from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, less than 25% of them blog at all. Of the ones that do, SocialMediaToday notes that most good corporate blogs are primarily authored by high-tech companies. Even worse, the UMASS study also discovered that some large companies are giving up on social media altogether. 

These large companies are missing out because blogging is important to reaching customers and connecting with them. As digital marketers we know this. A recent HubSpot study reveals that blogging businesses attract 55 percent more website visitors than those that don’t. It is also a great way for Fortune 500 companies to create an authentic brand voice that resonates with their customers.

The Business Sense of Blogging

The issue of blogging at large companies comes down to whether it makes business sense. In addition to attracting more website visitors and supporting your brand, we can come up with at least five good reasons to blog:

1. SEO.  Want to reach the top of search engine results? Blogs help with keyword placement and letting search engines know that your site is updated regularly.
2. Marketing Differentiation.  In the case of branding, standing out is a good thing that attracts clients and customers.
3. Content Marketing. Blogs are a great piece of a content marketing strategy that provides valuable information and establishes your company as a thought leader.
4. Public Relations. When your blog entries get picked up by aggregation services like ragan.com, that’s massive reach.
5. Crisis Management. On the flip side of public relations, blogs can help with damage control.

Make a Plan

Of course, in a large corporation, bureaucracy and politics may hinder corporate blogging.  Formulate a plan for your corporate blog (which you should do no matter what your company’s size is!):

• Start with your goals of what you want the blog to accomplish.
• Establish content themes and editorial guidelines.
• Clearly define who is writing the blog and what the approval process will entail.
• Outline a comment policy – for example, you may want to block anonymous comments, or you may want all comments moderated before they’re posted.
• Find your voice.  This is the brand message that you will project on your blog.

Blog Personality

Whether you believe corporations are people or not, the corporate blog needs to have personality and humanize the corporation. It is not a press release or brochure – a blog is written by human beings. If you know what your company stands for and what message you want to convey with your blog, you are already halfway to creating a successful corporate branding blog. The style and voice will emerge naturally, as long as you allow the company’s personality to peek through the entries.

In a follow up to this blog, we’ll give you what we think are The Best Fortune 500 Blogs and explore examples that set these apart. Some of the companies we’ll feature include Caterpillar, Starbucks, Marriott, GE and Southwest Airlines. Many of the above are written (or ghost written) by the head of the company. We strongly recommend that the CEO be one of your bloggers, but all company employees should also participate in corporate blogging!

Corporate blogging is not about marketing in the traditional sense. However, if you do it right, your blog will become one of your most powerful marketing tools by engaging customers, employees, and the press.

What do you think are some of the Best Fortune 500 blogs out there, and why? Share them with us and we’ll add some of your thoughts to our follow up blog.