Corporate blogging is quickly coming into its own. The Internet is an awesome medium because it’s so good at putting people directly in touch with one another. Solid corporate blogging strategy takes advantage of this ability, but if not executed well, the results can be disappointing at best, and disastrous at worst.

Corporate blogging is just one part of a broader strategy to find, understand and serve consumers who visit the corporate Web site, or use the corporation’s products. It’s value in soliciting and collecting feedback is inestimable. If used correctly, corporate blogging can propel a company to the forefront, and position it well ahead of the competition, simply by delivering the content and the connection that consumers want.

Some corporate blogs are written by a single person, or are put together by the corporate media group. Other companies put their executives out on the front line to connect with and field feedback from the consumer public. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, but consistency in terms of message, value in terms of content, and the ability to include your consumers in the conversation will enable your corporate blogging strategy to deliver its highest potential.

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Earlier this month, Starbucks launched a new Web site. Launching a business Web site is nothing new, but this Starbucks site was established to capture consumer feedback and ideas about how the company should modify itself to perk up its US coffee sales. The comments have rolled in by the hundreds to the MyStarbucksIdea.com.

The site is really nothing more than a Web 2.0 suggestion box, but at the same time, Starbucks most valuable consumers have taken to it because it’s an easy, convenient way for them to access the Starbucks corporate administration. The site accepts consumer feedback, and comments, much like what you would find on a blog or social networking site. Visitors can also vote on ideas. The site is succeeding, despite critics’ predictions to the contrary, because clearly consumers feel like they’re being heard, and they like that!

If you visit the site, you’ll see that voting is an integral part of the brainstorming process. Popular ideas get pushed to the top of the list. The volume of comments on an idea can also affect its placement, as can the timeliness of the voting. The company also offers its own feedback, in the form of reports about ideas and what will happen with them.

Starbucks has established a marketplace of ideas, and for whatever it cost, they’ll get more ideas than they can handle in a short period of time from those people who matter most to the company: the consumers. Starbucks is working with Salesforce.com to manage this site. You may recognize Salesforce.com as being the principal behind Dell’s IdeaStorm.com Web site.

This site is a perfect illustration of how a Web site can be used to establish and promote a good relationship between a business and its consumers. By broadening the process of product development and product improvement, and by collecting consumer feedback via public forum, companies like Starbucks and Dell are breathing new life into the old suggestion box.

You don’t need to set up a separate site to get consumer feedback for your company; your blog will do just fine. If you don’t yet have a corporate blog, set one up and start building your consumer relationships today.

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Blogging has been around for a decade or more and businesses are beginning to see the value of blogging as a marketing technique. In the Internet age, businesses are now beginning to see the value in blogging and working with bloggers to promote products. Many consumers turn to blogs when seeking out information and product reviews. The value of blogging and the role of the blogger are being redefined.

In a 2007 Manning Selvage and Lee survey, seven of ten marketing professionals said that they already targeted bloggers or were planning to in an effort to better deliver their messages. Nearly half said that they were watching consumer-generated content carefully.

Perhaps the most revealing information about blogging as a marketing technique comes from a 2007 study that showed that marketing leaders used blogs twice as much as non-leaders did. Blogging has a big impact on the current generation of consumers and businesses who use blogging as a marketing technique clearly benefit.

You’ll get the biggest bang from blogging when you establish a direct relationship between your products or services and the blog. Provide well-thought out information, reviews and commentary to add value to your blog and you’ll establish yourself as a leader in the field.

Blogging is too big a factor in consumer research and purchasing decisions to ignore. As a marketing technique, blogging is a great way to establish a competitive advantage over other businesses in your niche. It also helps to establish you as a readily available authority that people turn to and trust when they want information, opinions and expertise.

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You may have just started a business or you may have been in business for a long time. Either way, in today’s economy, you’re looking for effective strategies for growing your business. It’s no secret that growth will help your business thrive, but that’s much easier said than done in a lagging economy – especially when many businesses are failing.

Many entrepreneurs have turned to the Internet because they now see that it’s a viable business channel. It presents a significant opportunity for growing your business and those companies that aren’t on the Internet are vulnerable because consumers are moving to the Internet in droves.

At this stage in the game, it’s simply not enough to have a Web site. If growing your business is important, you need to provide a way for consumers to interact with you and your business. A well-written, focused blog is a great way to reach out to your potential market. When you engage your consumers – and potential consumers – you put a very powerful tool to work. No contemporary business Web site should be without a blog, but many companies miss out on this opportunity.

Most US consumers have access to the Internet and they put it to good use. They research products, services and vendors. They look for specialty items that are hard to find. They look for suppliers and other consumers who share their interests. They seek out opinions, new products, product reviews, tips, information they can use, how-to’s, tools and discussion forums.

Not surprisingly, by providing these value-adds in the form of a business blog, you’ll find yourself growing your business in no time. One of the real benefits of the Internet is that it removes limitations that your brick-and-mortar business may experience. People who want your products and services can reach you 24 hours a day from wherever they are. Knowing where your customers are is half of the battle, and knowing what they want will put you light years ahead of your competition.

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Yesterday, I wrote about why small businesses should blog, and said that one of the primary benefits of blogging was the ability to reach specific consumers. Blogging also provides a great opportunity for small businesses because many big competitors don’t take advantage of social media. The opportunity isn’t limited to writing blogs, either. Blog advertising and blog commenting can play vital roles in any blog marketing campaign.

Unfortunately for them, consumers are reading blogs like crazy. I’m not talking about young consumers, either. Blogs have a distinct appeal to consumers in their 30’s and 40’s. If that’s the demographic you’re trying to hit and you’re not blogging, you’re missing out on a lot.

Aside from writing blogs, blogging provides the opportunity to reach your target market in other ways, too. You can advertise on blogs that reach your target market. Imagine what scoring a direct hit on your target market will do for your site. Blog advertising on an existing weblog that appeals to your ideal consumers could provide an immediate and high conversion rate, simply because you advertised in front of the right market for your product or service at the right time. Talk about highly effective advertising!

Commenting on other writers’ blogs can also put your product or service out in front of a ready-made audience. Try it for a few weeks and see if your traffic doesn’t increase. The trick with commenting is that it should be relative to the subject and shouldn’t be an obvious sales pitch.

Remember, the point of blogging is to provide value for your readers. Comments are only valuable if they’re topical and provide insight, opinion or other value to the reader. Your comments need to show the same characteristics as a dedicated blog post does to be effective in the long term: focus on the topic and create value for the reader. If you can do that, you can create a solid marketing position that will easily support your other marketing efforts.

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There’s no way around it: blogging takes time. When it comes to blog marketing, one question that comes up a great deal is authenticity. Can a blog authored by a professional writer achieve the same authenticity as one written by the CEO?

Yes. The perspective of the writer may be different, but that’s true regardless of who writes the blog. The advantage of using a professional writer is that the professional writer has the time and makes the effort to learn the company and its message. The writer also the needs of the blog’s readership and makes a dedicated effort to meet those needs.

Blogging demands both authenticity and transparency. If you abide by this, your blog marketing strategy won’t present the professionally written blog as having come from the CEO. The reader is always going to know that the blog doesn’t come from the CEO or another personality within the company, and will judge the blog on its content, rather than upon its author.

Good blog marketing focuses on the blog’s content, not the blog’s author. Good content engages its readers, makes them feel comfortable and welcome, and encourages their participation. In other words, the CEO isn’t the only person within the company who can speak authentically about the company, its mission, and its market.

Ultimately, blogging does take time and does demand effort. Whether your senior management adopts this effort, passes it to someone in marketing, or whether you choose to hire a consultant to write your blog and provide blog marketing services, understand that you can achieve authenticity and transparency in business blogging, and a professional writer can be your ace in the hole.

It sounds like strange question for a business blogger, but many business bloggers don’t know who their ideal customers are. Not knowing your ideal customer can lead you to make serious errors in your blog marketing strategy, and can cause all kinds of grief in the long term.

Knowing your ideal customer will help you fine-tune your material to connect – really connect – with him or her. That connection to your ideal customers is worth far more than a link, or ten links or one hundred links. When you connect with your ideal customer, you build a relationship that can last for years, and the relationship is what you’re after.

Knowing your ideal customer helps you to focus not only your material but also your business on meeting that customer’s needs. The real value of your business blog is the precision with which it can locate and attract your ideal customers. Those ideal customers are looking for you, and your business blog can act like a homing beacon, if you produce it properly and position it where they’re likely to look.

Ideal customers are attracted to your blog when it’s more about them and less about you. When your blog provides real value, in the way of opinion, commentary, useful information, product comparisons, how-to tips, and the benefit of your experience, you fill a need that your ideal customer has. Your blog, your site, and your business become indispensable to them. They value what you have to say and what you do, and for that, they’ll reward you by being loyal customers, and by returning to your site again and again.

In today’s commoditized world, loyalty is hard to come by. When you use your blog to distinguish yourself, and to add value to your product or service, you step out of the “commodity provider” category and into a partnership with your customers. As long as you treat your partnership correctly, your customers will be yours for life.

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Business blogging isn’t an accidental venture. The best business blogs look like they’re unplanned, but they’re really the product of a lot of thought about how a business blog fits into the author’s business objectives.

If you understand how your business blog relates to your business objectives, developing blog marketing and content strategies will become much easier. Everything that appears in your blog should support your blog marketing strategy in some way. When you know what your objectives your blog is supposed to support, it’s easy to see the content that does and doesn’t belong.

Having a blog marketing strategy is like having a target; the more you work with your strategy, the easier it will become to know whether or not your strategy is achieving its objectives. The strategy drives the content for your blog and the whole process becomes easy to sustain.

Bloggers who lack a blog marketing strategy find themselves running short on content. The constant focus on having something to put into the blog takes its toll. Generating content, rather than supporting the blog marketing strategy, then becomes the focus of their efforts. Eventually, the business blog dies because the writer didn’t know where the blog was going, and the blog didn’t seem to be doing much for the business anyway.

If you haven’t taken time to figure out how your blog supports your business objectives, you’re probably missing out on the real potential of your business blog. Think carefully about your business objectives and what your blog can be doing to support them. Adjust your blog marketing strategy to align with your objectives, and you’re unlikely to run short on content ever again.

One of the best things you can do for your business blog is to spend a bit of time thinking about it. Lots of business bloggers jump in with both feet, only to find that their blog isn’t producing the site traffic they hoped to see. In this case, it’s easy to get discouraged.

Blog marketing doesn’t have to be like this. Instead, it can be rewarding personally and commercially, if you’re willing to spend a bit of time thinking about the audience you’re trying to reach and the message you want to send.

In any blog marketing effort, start by thinking about the audience. Who are you trying to reach? You really need to know your target audience before you can craft an effective blog marketing campaign. You need to understand what appeals to the audience and what they will find value in. If you make the audience your primary focus, you’ll reap the benefits of blog marketing quickly.

Once you know your audience and have identified your blog’s value proposition, you can think about the message you want to send. When I say “message” I don’t mean content. I mean what do you want your audience to think about whenever they read your blog? What is your theme? What is the thread that links everything you do on the blog?

Once you have your message, you can pick out the keywords that will help your audience find you. Your message and your keywords will drive your content. Remember, your keywords are only valuable if you use them consistently in your blogs!

Focus on your audience, first and foremost. Focus on the relationship between your audience’s needs and your message. Use your keywords in your posts.

There is more to business blogging than that, but if you’re doing these three things, you’re off to a great start!

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Business blogging takes time, effort and occasionally, a thick skin. One of the most valuable aspects of business blogging is its ability to put you in direct contact with your customers. Just remember that your customers also want to be in contact with you, too.

A great way to encourage that kind of customer communication is by allowing comments on your blog. You’ll find that your blog marketing efforts are much more productive when you allow your readers to join your conversation.

Yes, sometimes they’ll be critical of what you have to say. Sometimes they’ll post irrelevant comments, or won’t agree with your message. Believe it or not, that kind of feedback is just as important and valuable as that which is in 100 percent agreement with you. How so? When you accept criticism, questions and negative feedback, you send the message to your community that you’re interested in what they have to say, no matter what it is. Sometimes, negative feedback can give you insight into your customer base that you would not have otherwise recognized or received.

Commentary from your customers is one of the better benefits of blog marketing. If you’re not accepting comments on your blog, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to let your customers reach you with their message.

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