Browsing through my Google reader for posts on everything on web analytics, social media, and business intelligence, it dawned on me the filtering process I go through before I click a link. or if I do click, if I even read the post. It got me thinking about blog credibility and how it can and cannot work for you. First, it is important to see the context of my blog reading. I read blogs to educate myself on how to take things to the next level. That said, I filter based on one simple observation: business or professional.
If I am looking for information on how to extend the value of web analytics, take a strategic approach with social media, or better design and implement business intelligence solutions I put more credibility in the insight from practitioners than a company. So, when I see URLs that are from known businesses or have a business name in them, I don’t click through. If there is ambiguity and I click through and get to a businesses blog, I don’t read the article.
To be fair, when I’m at the stage that I would like to find a service provider or interact with or hear comments from other professionals using solutions and services I want to purchase or am using, then blogs from businesses have value and credibility for me. However, I am already familiar with the brand/provider and directly visit the website and blog.
This goes back to the debate on integrating your blogs with your business websites or having them stand on their own. I flip flop on this issue as there is huge SEO benefit from blog and website integration, but going back to my filtering behavior, it can have an unintended affect of not getting the most out of your thought leadership and branding effort. Establishing a blog and determining how you want to implement it is highly tied to what you are trying to accomplish and how that fits into the behavior and needs or your audience.
Given what you want to accomplish will determine how you utilize blogging in your marketing tactics.
Goal: Thought leadership
The primary use of blogs, this offers challenges. As I’ve described in my own blog filtering behavior, assessing expertise and leadership is done in two stages: (1) general education (2) vendor assessment. The issue I see is that blogs on corporate sites try to take on a conversational tone and pretend to be non-selling, but this isn’t really accomplished. Having the brand attached brings out cynicism in the reader. Now, if you have subject matter expertise in your workforce, posting on community networks or through non-branded blog sites may offer a less “sell” type of approach. Take networks like SocialMediaToday, here you have venues where subject matter experts in leading agencies, marketing organizations, and boutique services organizations provide relevant and thought provoking points of view. Most recognize the underlying point of blogging is to generate buzz and build personal or business brand. But, there is a subtlety here. Blogger personalities become recognized and through little more than a click you get the connection. At the end of the day you spread a perspective shaping the community’s thought without the stigma of selling. The goal is to see how the market is aligned to your position and are your subject matter experts generating relationships that can lead to higher consideration of your point of view and company.
Goal: Conversion
In this scenario corporate blogs are kings. You don’t want to disassociate and can approach posts similarly to how you approach white paper development or press releases. On your site, it is all about you and while the tone can be conversational, putting a sales spin on is not unexpected and is actually required. Trying to be too soft in conversations won’t lend to conversion. You need to not only re-establish thought leadership but provide prospective customers with a purpose of considering your products and services or actually clicking through to a sale. The perspective that social media should be a party, on your website, forget it. That isn’t to say that the marketing fluff you used in press releases for SEO and positioning statements for solution descriptions should be used. The point is to still keep posts informative, relevant, and convince customers that you are their best choice at a more detailed and credible perspective. Blogs for conversion are all about lifting sales either directly through e-commerce activities or priming the marketing funnel with more qualified leads.
Goal: Customer Relationships
Similar to conversion, stay on relevant topics and be supportive of the after sale relationship. Position case studies in posts to describe how to get the most out of your solutions. Create interactive discussions for problem solving or new solution ideas. Bring forth ideas to generate interest in new areas you may be moving into. Leverage your blog in a forum format and become a member of your customer’s team. This is where your focus is on engagement to improve satisfaction, likeliness to purchase from you again, and generate evangelists and advocacy in the market.

Filed under: b2b, blogging, customer relationship, social media, social media marketing