Come & Go Vietnam

Here’s the slideshow from my social media presentation last week, brought to you by the magic of Google Docs…

This is a piece I’ve just been asked to write for Saigon Times. It will eventually appear in Vietnamese as it’s aimed at Vietnamese companies who are interested in starting corporate blogs, so thought I’d post the full English text here. A little off-topic for a travel site but you may find it interesting!

Whilst blogs were originally intended as online personal journals, during the last few years businesses and corporations have got in on the act and now no self-respecting company is without its own corporate blog. Companies such as Boeing, GM, IBM and Google are regular and active bloggers, generating millions of hits every month.

In Vietnam however, the blog is still seen as a personal thing. Thousands of Vietnamese regularly share their thoughts and images on Yahoo 360, but very few companies do likewise, despite blogging’s effectiveness as a marketing tool. Want to get started? Here are the most common corporate blogging questions answered.

1.       Why do I need a corporate blog?

Blogs and other social media tools are becoming increasingly popular, and are now more popular than email. People enjoy reading and subscribing to blogs, and commenting on what they read, so they are a perfect way to enter into a dialogue with your customers and to get feedback from them on your products and services.

Blogs are also a good way to establish your trustworthiness by being more open and transparent. Brochures, reports, sales letters etc tend to be very formal and readers know they are being sold to; with blogs you can relax a little and write in a more open, informal style about your activities. One good example of this is Boeing, whose VP wrote a heartfelt piece when his company was forced to make thousands of redundancies earlier this year.

An informative, well-written blog also positions you and your company as thought leaders, experts in your field. Showing an interest in and a knowledge of the business outside your office door is a great way to boost your authority and credibility.

Blogs are also a good way of generating more traffic to your site. Search engines love sites with regularly updated content, and a blog is a very quick and easy way to do this.

2.       How do I set up a blog? Is it expensive?

The good news is it’s easy, and it’s free. You should already have a company website, so it’s just a case of getting your webmaster to add a blog page, using a free tool such as Wordpress. This allows you to create an attractive, customised page with an RSS feed so people can subscribe to your blog. If this is too complicated, you can create a blog hosted outside your website, again for free, with Wordpress or Blogger.

Then, all you need to invest is a little time to write posts!

3.       How do I attract an audience?

Most importantly, find out what your customers are interested in and write about that! If you’re selling baby milk for example, visit forums and chatrooms for young mothers, find out what their issues are, and write about them.

Circulate the blog amongst your staff, and get them to contribute too. More bloggers = more posts = more readers.

Put a link to your blog on all outgoing emails & letters, and even on your business card. Post links to your blog to social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and Cyvee. Create a monthly e-newsletter containing links to your blog posts.

4.       It’s just for my marketing department, right?

Wrong. Everyone in your company can and should get involved. Look at IBM for example – they encourage every area of their business to blog and they now have over 60 different corporate blogs from employees in marketing, development, sales, finance, programming, support and elsewhere.

Most importantly, people like to read CEO blogs – a CEO who takes the time to share his thoughts is clearly someone who cares about his business and his customers.

5.       But I’m not a very good writer!

It doesn’t matter. The beauty of blogs is that they are personal, chatty and informal, so you don’t have to be a great writer – people will soon get used to your personal style.

To get some ideas & inspiration, have a look at some popular corporate blogs. Google “top ten corporate blogs” and check out some of the results. You’ll soon see that interesting content is far more important than writing style.

6.       My line of business isn’t very interesting. What can I write about?

Story-based marketing is highly effective, and all businesses have stories to tell. If you run a taxi firm for example, ask your drivers for funny things that have happened to the in their vehicles, and blog about that. If you travel a lot on business, blog about your travels and the places you visit. If you run a consultancy, blog about customer success stories.

The potential is boundless and just because your business isn’t the most exciting in the world doesn’t mean you don’t have any good stories!

7.       Sum up the advantages & disadvantages of blogging for me.

Disadvantages – you need to spend a bit of time each week on your blog. Busy executives may not have time. If you’re encouraging your staff to blog, someone will need to moderate their postings to make sure no negative messages are going out. And you do need a little bit of IT nous to make sure your blog looks good, contains plenty of links, and is easy for people to find and subscribe to.

Advantages – it’s free! Whereas other forms of marketing and advertising are becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to measure (banner ads for example), blogging is free, highly targeted and very measurable. It establishes you and your company as honest, open, approachable and knowledgeable. It gives your customers an enjoyable communication channel with you. And most of all, it’s fun – once you’ve started it’s easy to get addictive, and you’ll soon be seeing blog posting potential in every business trip, meeting, product launch or company event!

So to sum up, if you don’t already have a corporate blog you should certainly think about starting one. As the global recession begins to bite, companies need to find effective, low-cost marketing tools that keep them ahead of their competitors, and a blog definitely fits the bill. For more advice, do some Googling or feel free to contact me at timmyruss@gmail.com. Happy blogging!