Make a company blog

It seems easy, right? In reality this is the great feat of your life: you can not go wrong. Or rather, you must make mistakes as little as possible. That’s why I created this guide.

Do you want to create a successful corporate blog that will let you sell? I understand it, I have clients who think this way: things are bad, I need blogs, visits, sharing. And everything necessary to record good results.

It is difficult to open a corporate blog and get good results. The online diary takes time. It must be managed by experienced people and you can not improvise. If you put that competition is always around the corner you can well understand my concern.

Despite this passage I believe that the corporate blog is one of the best tools to achieve goals. And here I mean the turnover. Not the visits, not the shares or the comments. Working in this direction means investing .

For this you need to focus your resources on the right path : you have to build a blog, perhaps starting from an institutional website, and you must identify the topics to be addressed in the ordinary management of the editorial calendar . Is all this easy?

What is a blog and how it works: definition

The topics of the post

• What is a blog and how it works: definition
• Why should you open a company blog?
• Why create a corporate blog: advantages
• Better a corporate blog or website?
• How to create a corporate blog on WordPress
• The best template for corporate blog
• How to make money with a company blog
• Business blogs: examples of success
• Create a company blog: your idea

The first point to be addressed is this: to give an explanation. Often the entrepreneurs who come to me start by proudly displaying the news section of the website. Proposing it as a blog .

In reality it is not so, we are talking about two different worlds: the news area is something static, a simple relaunch of news that (usually) arouses little interest. The blog, on the other hand, is a tool for doing inbound marketing . Or to be found when people need you. And of your company. What is a blog from a practical point of view? What is it?

We talk about an online diary that allows you to publish an infinite number of resources , web pages recognized as posts that build the narrative.

The articles are divided into tags and categories , taxonomies to organize the contents , and joined by a sidebar that allows you to add banners and widgets .

These elements can be useful to arrive on landing pages, pages designed to collect specific effects. For example, selling a product, requesting a quote for a service. It all depends on the type of business that concerns you.

To read: how to make money with a blog

Why should you open a company blog?

The question asked by entrepreneurs: there are successful Italian business blogs , but should today open a new project? We continue the thesis of the social network in favor of writing, publishing articles on WordPress.

But it is so? Not exactly. This graph of www.businessesgrow.com shows that over time the creation of corporate blogs has undergone several evolutions. Today there is an important trend towards the opening of blogs . This also in large companies, in larger and more complex companies. A strong signal, do not you think?

Why create a corporate blog: advantages

Now you know what a blog is and how it works. The next question: why focus on this tool? The concept is simple and concerns the needs of the public. Indeed, potential customers. Of the people who should buy your property.

This passage is part of the aforementioned model linked to inbound marketing . You have to be found by the right people and the very nature of the blog allows all this. Such as? Writing articles capable of intercepting needs , concrete needs.

And not the usual press releases without mordant, without a voice. Or maybe those news read only to the owner. This is not the content marketing that interests us.

 

As you can see from the classic Hubspot funnel, the blog is a tool that must be combined with SEO and social media marketing , and that has a specific purpose: to bring unknown people to the company website. Here then there are the landing pages that convert.

But the previous step is the prerogative of the corporate blog . Almost exclusively. In a corporate solution all this becomes interesting.

So, why invest in the corporate blog? The key goal is gain through two different solutions – direct sales or lead generation – but there may be other purposes. For example, you can create a community around your name.

You can also make brand awareness or maybe focus on the customer care service . This is why it is essential to work on the editorial plan before starting.

Care for the company blog to get real results

Click To Tweet

Better a corporate blog or website?

The business diary can be useful for several reasons. How to create everything? How to start writing your articles? There are two solutions: you can set up the blog as the basis (online) of your company, or you can create a blog on an institutional website. What is the best solution? There is no definitive answer:

• The blog is a dynamic tool.
• The company website is static.

As a result an online presence focused on the blog demands a constant update: it is your business card, you can not lose shots. If you re-read the blog in a section of the website, you have more margins of freedom .

Without forgetting the related meanings: the blog is close to the concept of a lean , young company , capable of questioning and listening to the public.

Better a blog or a website? The latter, at least as an idea, remains anchored to the logic of the past. You arrive and I speak. Basing an online presence on the blog can be part of a message, of an intent linked to the dynamism of the project . Although there are no fixed concepts: a company is not different just because it is based on the blog.

The best books for the corporate blog

• SEO Gardening manual
• How to sell with the company blog
• Blogging: how to create winning content
• Create your digital tribe with the blog

How to create a corporate blog on WordPress

To open a corporate blog with WordPress you have to do is buy a domain , choose a hosting and upload the CMS. Never bet on the blog for free or on third level domains: a company blog must be synonymous with professionalism.

 

So, first step: buy the domain through a provider . Then do the same with a web hosting and I recommend Serverplan . How much does it cost to open a blog?

We are around 100 euros choosing good quality services. The CMS is WordPress and you download for free. If you want to have everything, and if you need it, you can purchase an SSL protocol and guarantee security for the transfer of sensitive data.

Once you have combined the various elements (for technical aspects you can read my guide to create a blog ) you are ready to publish your best articles. First you have to solve a series of technical and creative problems that you should not underestimate.

How to choose the name and domain of the blog

You have to make a decision: the name of the blog. The question is very simple, the best solution is given by the company. There is no reason why you should give a different name to the blog and the same goes for the domain. To know more:

• How to choose the name of the blog
• How to choose the right domain

Folder, subdomain or separate blog?

This is a more interesting question: better to put the company blog in a directory (directory) of the site or in a subdomain ? Or maybe in a separate domain?

The solutions are these and often entrepreneurs who want to create a corporate blog have difficulty making a decision. Here are the options:

• www.mysocialweb.it/blog
• blog.mysocialweb.it
• www.mysocialweb.it Vs. www.mysocialweblog.it

Folder, subdomain or other domain: which one to choose? Characters like John Mueller have pointed out that it is the same, but many SEO experts have benefited from using the directory instead of subdomain. Without disturbing technical issues.

The best solution – from a branding point of view and overall project coherence – is to have everything on one site.

Extreme opposite: bring the blog to a different domain. But debase the work of link earning : if the blog can be a good way to get links from other sites, in this way you lose all the benefits for your business domain.

To read: how to buy the best hosting for WordPress

The best template for corporate blog

Chose the name, identified the domain: now you have to give a template to the blog. What is the best solution in these cases? You can choose from a myriad of free themes, but if you want to work well, you should prefer a paid one (often better).

You can take advantage of one of the famous themes with institutional home page and blog in the subfolder, so you can give a summary of your business reality before proposing the contents . What you see below is a clear example: you have the home that welcomes and informs, then there is the blog, to follow you find other useful resources.

Still a good example of a theme for corporate blogs.

Of course, there is no such thing as a blog theme defined a priori. There are no rules. But the solution with static home page and blog section accessible from the menu is one of the most popular. You can choose a solution like the one you see above.

So you can bet everything on the visual. While the first option is suitable for a classic company, the latter may be ideal for those who have made their flag creative. In other words, you have to choose a quality WordPress theme but at the same time representative of your corporate identity . And here you are not joking.

In a corporate blog, efficiency is everything. Therefore, when choosing the template, remember to have an eye for the responsive design and for the loading speed. Needless to choose a beautiful and not functional theme: you have to be perfect from all points of view.

How to make money with a company blog

Creating a corporate blog is not easy, but it is the starting point for touching a concrete outcome: monetizing. On this point I want to be clear, you can not allow word turns. The company blog does not need to waste time .

It must drive towards the results. To do this he needs an editorial plan . This means that you need to create a document that can identify:

• Characteristics of the project.
• Strengths and weaknesses.
• Target characteristics.
• Main and secondary objectives.
• Contents and editorial calendar.

If you want to deepen I suggest you take a look at my article that explains how to make an editorial plan . However, I can not overlook the most important and already mentioned point of view: the objectives. Why did you create a corporate blog?

 

To sell more . Now this is the target. The corporate blog can have a series of micro objectives that lead to the result, and which you can not ignore. Examples?

The positioning on search engines thanks to articles written in SEO , the creation of a community, customer care in the comments, the authoritativeness of the brand and the increase of subscribers to the newsletter. For more information, I suggest you:

• The pyramid of goals in the blog
• What are the goals of a blog

Sell with a company blog

The transition to exploit the company blog: the economic transaction . Through the content you publish every day (or maybe every week, depends on the calendar) intercept information searches and bring people interested in your work.

The chart taken by the Da Zero group at SEO is all too clear: on the left I have the website that is positioned for the commercial keywords, on the right I have the blog that climbs the serp for the information queries . And that brings people on the pages of e-commerce.

This is the best way to sell with the company blog. But I can use his strength on other occasions, for example when I want to push an infoprodotto.

Remember the difference between informational and transactional keywords: the blog should not cannibalize the portal , it should not be positioned for commercial research.

 

In these cases it is essential to make a preliminary analysis of the keywords, understand how to reach the public and maximize sales. Each page has a purpose, and your goal is to bring the right people to where they are converted .

If visitors already have this need (buy / book) it is superfluous to make them go from a resource not optimized for this operation, do not you think?

Find new customers online

The company blog should not be used in a sales perspective. Of course, it is often possible but there are businesses that do not need this.

Because they do not sell goods or services through an e-commerce, or the sales process is longer. Take as an example My Social Web: here I do not sell, I propose my being a freelance web writer . But it is not the only case to be considered.

The same goes for the B2B universe when you work on a lead generation with a more complex funnel. And with a passage dedicated to email marketing that feeds the potential customer in a journey made of different contents. Here is a graph of Moz.

 

There are contents to convince the lead and bring it to the final action . But the blog remains central in this process: through the articles intercept the public and take it to the landing page. Which have the task of transforming the reader into a client.

Business blogs: examples of success

Clear, now you want to know the examples of corporate blogs that have been popular. Because it’s easy to talk about theory, now you want practice. You want to know the virtuous cases and you want to find out what the secret key is to collect good results .

If you want, I’ll tell you right away: it’s planning. You have to organize your publishing activity, you have to make sure that everything revolves around continuity and consistency. Do you have a goal? Follow him. Not just today but for as long as necessary. Just like they did these examples of successful international corporate blog

 

Ok, creating a corporate blog is not easy. What characterizes these examples? How to build a successful blog? It takes constancy. Above all, we need a knowledge of the target : these examples of corporate blogs are concrete.

They do not want to please everyone. But only to the people they consider necessary for their business. Creating a personal blog is a story, working on a corporate blog another: here you have to think about business, and you have to do it because writing becomes a cost . So, do you want to create a corporate blog? Bet on an idea.