I just found out about a new Corporate Blog for one of the Singapore Hotels – the Royal Plaza Singapore Blog! According to the blog:

Royal Plaza Singapore, one of the leading business class hotel situated in the famous Singapore Orchard Road shopping district, will be closed for renovation from October 2006. It will re-open in January 2007.

Well, starting a blog at this time is great, and its important to get the blog published and publicised immediately – let the customers know of the blog, so the customers will know exactly what is going on during renovation, and what kind of opening offers it might have when it reopens in 2007!

I think we must all agree that a business blog or corporate blog may not be for every business out there. While a corporate blog can help to build a good reputation for the company and help the company to get in touch with its customers, there are some key issues to iron out before you get started on a corporate blog.

Here are some things to consider.

1. Objective of your blog

You want your readers and customers to come to your blog once, and then be forever glued to it, checking back everyday, right? That’s the ideal situation, because you want them to hear and give feedback on what you have to say. So what are the topics you want to talk about? What do the customers want to hear? While it may be nice for you to write about what’s happening in office everyday and how what you are doing aligns to your corporate vision, what some readers are looking for may be stories of how others have informatively used your product, for example.

You need to know what gap your blog wants to fill. You need to know the objective of blogging! Please don’t turn your readers away by giving them stuff they could not care less for.

2. Have a good grasp of your blogging software!

There are heaps and truckloads of blogging software out there, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. So which one will you use for your business blog? Actually, it does not really matter which platform you choose – it is more important that you have a good grasp of the one you choose! If you choose Blogger, make sure you know how to use it well. If you are using WordPress, again, make sure you know how things work!

Its easy to get started on a blog. Blogger can get you started in 10 minutes or less! But, its not easy to get a professional looking one! You could use the default templates for the blog engine, but you must know what is on your blog. For example, you need to know how to at least edit the default blogger template, so that you can get rid of the “Edit-me” links on the sidebar by default. You need to know how to make sure the author’s bio shows what you want to show!

Remember, while search engines search for text, the visual appeal is necessary for human visitors.

3. Optimize your blog for search engines

I’ve mentioned it in my previous post, actually. You need to know how to write your blog posts to rank well in search engines. Over 75,000 blogs are created every single day. How do you make yours stand out? Your blog will become another provision shop in the Sahara Desert if you do not optimize and get listed on search engines – people won’t be able to find you!

You need to know the basics of SEO, publish your feeds and get your blog listed on Search Engines – at least for people who are searching specifically for more information you your company’s products!

4. Good PR Skills

Ultimately, the blog is just a tool. You need to know what to do with the blog, you need to know how to handle feedback, you need to know how to write so that people will listen, to keep your content interesting and updated. If you turn a deaf ear to negative feedback – let me tell you this – its not going to work out! If there is someone talking about your company’s products, you need to know what its about, and address the issue right away!

You also need to know what is happening in the blogosphere – search Technorati and other blog aggregators about what others are posting in your industry. Remember, your reputation is at risk and you cannot just sit there thinking that the problem will go away.

To sum up, if you want to start blog, make sure you know your objective, and know how to use your blog well. I would recommend you to even test it out on a separate domain or on a free service how to use your blogging software. In the end, the blog reflects your company, so do a good job.

Guess what? I just found out that even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a blog! Their blog, the FTC Tech-ade blog, was just started over week ago. As mentioned on its first post, the main objective of the blog is to communicate with the public in anticipation of our public hearings, that will take place later in the year.

Its like a discussion board to solicit opinions prior to an event – I think its a brilliant idea.

Just yesterday, they talked about corporate blogging!

….corporations have begun to use the same medium, the blog, to communicate internally, with their employees, as well as externally, with consumers…. Blogging has also become a means for CEOs to communicate with their companies’ most knowledgeable customers. One example demonstrates that consumer responses received through blogs can be as likely to help a corporation as to cause any harm; in fact, an external blog may have facilitated consumer preferences being taken into account in product development….

And I do agree with them. I think blogs are the best way for the CEO to communicate directly to their customers, to solicit feedback to ask customers what they want, to handle complaints openly, to promote a new product or service… because blogs are like the hot news, the personal voice gets people to come back and read the updates every day.

Oh, and by the way, the blogging engine they are running on is WordPress 2.0.4. Which is what I am using. 🙂 So, I’m on the right track yeah

Intel has decided to join the blogosphere! Check out the IT@Intel Blog.

However, as the business blog consulting blog puts it,

…although this is a public blog, it appears to be aimed not so much at the general public as at the IT community and people with related interests.

I think the target is good enough! Remember – the phenomenal trend now is about long tail marketing and niche targeting! I guess the main consumers who are really interested in Intel technology will be able to understand whatever is going on. The rest of the world just knows that there is an Intel chip in their PC.

At the time of writing, there are 5 people contributing to the blog, and from the blog authors page you can see that these people are not the little engineers, but are holding positions like “Senior Principal Engineer and Global Director of IT Innovation and Research”… Solid work.

I love the clean layout of the blog, simple and to the point – wonderful design! And I think it brings out the corporate Intel feel too.

The blog is powered by Movable Type Enterprise 1.03.

Was reading this article on the MarketingProfs.com website that give a cool six step guide to start a corporate blog. Here are the six steps, condensed.

1. Test the waters

Make sure you know what to do to start a blog first, go test out, get a spare domain and test your setting up the blog there first!

2. Understand the ways blogs can be used in your organization

Know how you want to use the blog. Is it for promotion of new products? Or a way to communicate with your consumers, or just to keep your customers updated about what you are doing everyday?

3. Identify a small, well-defined area where you’ll start

Now this is important, and I said this a while ago, targeting long tail searches are very important! Define what you want to be good in, and be the best in it!

4. Set goals for the trial and educate stakeholders

Let the people in your organization know about the blog, and if you require them to participant, tell them HOW and teach them STEP-BY-STEP! You need to know that while you are a computer geek, others are not as geeky as you :P.

5. Create a draft blogging policy

Again, especially if your organization is big, you want to set some rules of what can and cannot be posted on your blog

6. Set up a single point of contact for questions

There are bound to be people who are going to fire you some questions about that blog you put up. Appoint a single point of contact, or use a discussion group to manage these queries.

Do check out the full article anyway, it a good read and will take you 5 minutes.

Remember that once you allow your employees to blog, they essentially have control over what will be displayed on your website! One playful and disgruntled employee is all you need to tarnish all that reputation and brand image that you have built for your company. Get good writers who can write good stuff!