The New Forefronts of Customer Support

The Promise of Corporate Blogging

You have heard it all. “Customer service is critical to business success.” “Give your customers a positive experience and they will return to you with more business.” “Be nice to your customers and very soon you will have them eating out of your hand”. “Set firm deadlines to resolve customer grievances”—the list is virtually endless and for a good reason. Customers drive businesses, businesses do not drive customers. The real key to accomplishing this objective is to continuously innovate and introduce new ways of keeping your customer base happy and fulfilled so that they not only keep returning to your website, but also tell others about you and generate the right type of positive buzz you will need to grow. Here is a coveted avenue worth considering. Others are implementing it and so can you.

Setting up a Corporate Blog

Corporate blogging is in and old-fashioned static HTML websites that provide no platforms for a two-way interaction between your customers and you are out. Blogging was initially brought to the attention of everyone by individuals who wanted their voices to be heard. Bloggers used an informal writing style to write about themselves, comment on political and social transitions, make unscientific predictions about the economy, and generally talk about this, that and the other. Readers flocked in droves because they not only could comment on the blog posts while preserving their anonymity, they could even comment on the comments of other site visitors. The corporate world was quick to recognize the innate potential of this new online communication platform. Most Fortune 500 companies and thousands of smaller ones now have corporate blogs of their own either on their primary websites or on website specially positioned as the company’s corporate blog website. Setting up a corporate blog on a free-hosted blogging platform such as Blogspot or Typepad is something we do not recommend since you have very little control over their functionality and reliability.

As an online entrepreneur or the head of a service organization, you too should have your own corporate blog if you do not have one already. If your corporate website allows it from a technical standpoint, use it to host your blog. Otherwise, you can also set up a brand new corporate blogging website and join the big leagues for a pittance.

Platform to Use in your Corporate Blog

Wordpress, a free and open source blogging solution, has emerged as the undisputed leader in this realm. Hire a competent Wordpress development firm to set up your corporate blog for you. You can use any one of the thousands of free templates currently available for your blog design or you can pay for a premium Wordpress theme for under $100 average. Once set up correctly, you do not need the services of a software design and consulting firm to upload your blog posts. It is so simple that middle school kids all over the US are uploading their own blog content themselves. Use the computer consulting firm’s services to implement major design changes, site overhauls and other updates and enhancements such as video uploads, slide presentations and customer polls—all of which you can easily implement once your Wordpress corporate blog has stabilized.

Updating your Content

You should post at least two or three times a week to your corporate blog. Since the language style used in the blogosphere is traditional and informal, You really do not need to hire a copywriter to craft your blog posts for your company. This responsibility can be assigned in-house to any one of your employees who has a crisp and clean writing style. Make product announcements. Identify innovative uses of your products and elaborate upon them. If you are planning to introduce a new product line, a new manufacturer or even a new service, your corporate blog is the best place to advertise it. Devote an equal number of blog posts to educational topics that inform your audience and add to their information library. If you decide to focus only on your company and its services in every blog post, many site visitors are liable not to return to you and go elsewhere. Building and preserving repeat traffic is critical to your success as a corporate blogger. For the convenience of your readership, ask your consulting firm to install and activate a Feedburner account for you so that each time you update your corporate blog with a new post, your registered users hear about it right away via an automated e-mail message. Integrating an industry-focused newsletter once your corporate blog has a loyal audience is an idea worth exploring. Remember that each time you respond to a blog-generated e-mail message or blog comment, you are providing customer support and literally narrowing and bridging the gap between your customer community and your company.

Blog Comments and the Customer Response Factor

Although Wordpress allows for the moderation of all blog comments meaning that each time a site visitor leaves a comment on your blog, it goes live only when you approve it, it is a sound business practice to approve legitimately voiced critical and negative comments about your company and its products. If the comment happens to be valid, process it immediately, provide valid feedback, and clearly outline the reasons why you took an unfavorable decision assuming you did. This practice tends to build unprecedented levels of trust and credibility for companies.

Implementing a corporate blog is not as difficult as you think since the software to design it, the tools to manage it, and the content to drive it are all within your physical reach. Implement a corporate blog as a component of your customer service initiative and watch the positive impact it will make not just to your brand identity and your corporate image but also to your productivity and profitability levels.