Blog Consulting Services

I can help you with:

  • Strategy and policy
  • Internal blog implementation
  • External marketing blogs
  • Training and adoption
  • Blog monitoring

Strategy and policy
What should your business be doing about blogs? Should you be blogging internally? Externally? Should you just be monitoring the blogosphere? A blogging strategy is essential for any public facing company.

Equally, you need a blogging policy: What should you do about employees who blog about work on their personal blogs? How will you manage your official or semi-official bloggers? Do you have blogging guidlines? Linking guidelines? Comment/trackback moderation guideliness?

These are all issues I have examined, and I can help you put together solid, constructive and supportive blogging strategy and policy documents to inform your future blogging projects.

Internal blog implementation
The easy way to start a blog project is to put up an instance of Movable Type or Wordpress, give people a login, and let them get on with it. In a business context, however, this approach is very hit and miss. Some people will take to blogging like a duck to water, others are less enthusiastic.

But blogging does not submit well to the traditional top-down command and control project structure. Frequently, the most interesting and creative uses of blogs are emergent, they come from the way that people bend blogs to do what they most find useful, rather than what someone else tells them is desirable.

A successful blogging project melds good planning with flexibility, it allows emergent behaviour whilst also providing constructive guidance for those who require it.

Marketing blogs
The great potential for using blogs as marketing tools is something that many people have latched onto, but the blogosphere can be cruel and unforgiving, and a poorly implemented marketing blog will do more damage than good. Many traditional marketing tricks either do not work or will backfire, and any company interested in using blogs for marketing or PR purposes must be fully aware of how their blog will be received.

Bloggers respect transparency, honesty, authenticity and intelligence. Any marketing blog must be written by real people - not the marketing department or the lawyers - who are willing to take part in conversations not just with other bloggers but with customers, some of whom are going to be disgruntled. The company must be willing to take some risks, to trust their blogger, and to open themselves up to the public.

If a business is going to have a marketing blog, it is imperative that they also have a strong blogging policy in place before the blog is launched which covers everything from what the blogger can and can’t discuss in public to how to deal with trolls (people who post rude or abusive comments). External blogs can bring tangible benefits to a business, but poorly executed they can also do real damage.

Training and adoption
Of course, it’s not enough to just implement blogs, internally or externally, and assume that they are just going to run themselves. Staff need training and support, both with the technical aspects of the new software and in terms of how blogging may impact upon their existing job. Some projects require internal marketing and evangelism to encourage adoption. I can provide both training and advice on how to promote adoption.

Blog monitoring
Even if you are not interested in using blogs yourself, you need to be aware of what they are and how they function. Blogs can be a boon to any company seeking to understand their customers and the marketplace within which they function. I can help you put together a blog monitoring strategy that will allow you to gather invaluable data from the blogosphere.