Best Practices for Corporate Blogs and The Three E’s of Social Media

I often answer questions from business people who are hesitant to start blogging due to fears about comments on their blog that they can’t control and negative reaction to their content.

First of all, you can set your blog to moderate comments and approve them before they go live. We LOVE to get comments (please comment below!) but we do not publish comments that don’t ‘comment’ on the blog and are merely promoting an agenda.

If your organization is sensitive to the messages being posted in blogs , you will need a policy for internal folks who have access to your blog. Set up a review and approval process before blog posts can go live. This removes the risk of something unacceptable being posted.

So what content should go on your blog?

I recently coined a strategic approach to Social Media Messaging called The Three E’s of Social Media.

Educate. Show your customers how to do things. Answer their questions. Be helpful. This can only build your credibility and build links to the posts which will improve search engine results!

Engage. Engage customers in a 2 way dialogue. Ask them questions. Run polls. Offer special contests and delight them with surprises for visiting the blog such as chances to win or links to free stuff.

Entertain. A blog (and all social media) should be social. Put a smile on their face. Shoot a funny video prior to the holidays. Shoot a video of your senior executive team doing karaoke. Post outtakes from your commercial shoot or a podcast or video cast.