Blogging & Managing Your Reputation

As a member of the Counselors Academy, we often get asked to comment on trends and issues impacting our industry. One of the most frequent questions we get is about blogging. Here are my two cents:

If you want to be perceived as an industry leader or a knowledge broker, then creating a blog is paramount to establishing your credibility. While blogs can be used to "sell," most blogs are meant to inform, educate and, most importantly, engage a key audience. While Web sites are static, blogs encourage dialogue and two-way communication that build a level of trust and appreciation for your branded product or service.

Monitor the news and blogs for articles that would be of interest to your audience. When writing about the news as a blogger, it is not just a matter of describing the news—though that is important. It is more imperative that you provide new, informative and entertaining analysis in order to sustain and grow your audience. That is why opinion and your personal perspective interlaced with your past experiences will help to add to your credibility and foster loyal readership.

Managing content is easy, but managing responses aren't in some cases. When you open up yourself to review and "community journalism," you may receive negative comments for all to see from an unhappy customer or a rival company posting under a fake name. The key to effective blogging is constant monitoring to respond quickly to inaccurate posts and questions from the public. Presenting the facts and how they relate to your brand position can turn a negative into a positive. Blogging is a two way street, so don't bury your head in the sand when negative posts occur. In doing so, it will only feed more negativity and create a mountain out of a mole hill.

Blogs help you maintain your focus. This may be difficult, depending on how your corporation structures it, but a blog also has the additional benefit of focusing your company on the needs and desires of your customer. You get to devote time to thinking about what your customers think about, what they want, what they're looking for. If your corporation has begun to lose its focus or even if it hasn't, a blog can help to remind you where you came from and how you got to where you are with your users.

Finally, blogging makes you human. Don't blog to keep up with the Jones' down the street. Blog because you feel blogging, and the input you receive, is right for your company. By putting a human aspect into the marketing process, you put a "face" behind the message instead of cold, faceless, unengaging brand. If you can pull off blogging, you add the human touch that will set you apart from your competition and all the other large corporations out there.

For more information, please visit www.carpenterpr.com.