Integrating a blog into your organisation's web site can, if applied intelligently and with genuine insight and passion, offer an extremely powerful and dynamic component to your web presence. There are numerous reasons why Blogging and Blog Integration is an ideal way to develop a business, to promote a cause, a campaign or share new ideas and concepts. When you take an informative and educational approach to information sharing and mix this with the online collaborative tools now available, blogging can generate a heady mixture of respect, loyalty and devotion. Such trust and attention laced throughout with all manner of potential is extremely hard won and rarely achieved through conventional advertising. Not only can your audience evolve into customers or converts, they can also assume the role of your virtual advocates, taking your message across the Internet in the form of viral marketing.

Blog integration can be a very good thing. Here's why:

1. People like people and people become passionate about passion. Blogs can reveal a human side to an organisation. If people can care about and genuinely empathise with you, then they will naturally share their experience of you. Online this often equates to inbound links; powerful components of SEO - Search Engine Optimisation. Whilst many professionals will advocate keeping it short, at SEO Consult we like to integrate easily readable blogs containing suitably easy-to-follow headings and sub headings with content of genuine worth. If the content if compelling, engaging, relevant and intelligent, then people will read every word. Not only that but they'll subscribe and link to the blog, which is the whole point that you've started it in the first place.
   At SEO Consult, we are experts in advising on and generating inspirational blog copy.
2. Blogs can act as instant feedback mechanisms. By enabling contributors access to an almost real-time feedback system through posting and other forms of Blog Interaction, you can quickly gauge the status of and reaction to an agenda that you are largely in control of setting. A blog can help reveal successes and failures, rapidly allowing you to act accordingly to accentuate a successful strategy or head off potential disaster at the pass.
3. Blog integration encourages organisations to define, analyse and present their knowledge for easier consumption. Sharing what you know, think and believe in succinct and attractive ways encourages search engine indexing, making it easier to be found by customers and prospects alike.
4. Blogs provide value to the reader by addressing a problem, concern, desire, or need that the reader has. Genuinely sincere, honest, informative or thought-provoking blog contributions encourage a buzz. Customers love posts that can help them solve problems or provide an insight or information on problem issues. People rarely want to know 'what' can be done; they want to know 'how' it's done. It is said that if you feel that you're giving away too much information in your blog pages, then you're on the right track.
   Blog information has an extremely short shelf life. It's absolutely critical that content is kept fresh and up to date. Do not let your blog go unattended for weeks on end. Focus on contributing several posts per week even if they're just a few paragraphs, and try to interact with other posters
5. Blog users can author content using familiar tools of choice (like WordPress). They can have simultaneous conversations. There are more multiple channels to information sharing and marketing than were ever possible in the past. Encourage interaction and participation. Post titles must stand out and get above the 'noise'. Quickly engage and communicate the value of reading further with your opening. Be sure to invite contribution.
6. Most blog service providers such as Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger offer attractive stand-alone or integration templates. There are now numerous widgets and add-ons available that can apply powerful additional functionality including RSS feeds, streaming media, Twitter account integration and so on. The list is almost endless. The RSS feed of your blog is one of the simplest ways to build repeat traffic. Once people are subscribed to it, they will keep receiving your messages until they decide to remove it. Each blog entry is a fresh opportunity to entice readers back to your site.
   Blogs and RSS are still relatively new technologies. To maximize your readership, it's probably wise to also offer users the option of subscribing via e-mail. We integrate systems that send an e-mail to all subscribers every time you post something on the blog (this is done by parsing your RSS feed).
7. Blogs can help establish your credentials within an industry and help position you as an expert and worthy source of information and opinion. Techcrunch, originally started by Michael Arlington in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups in Silicon Valley, has quickly become one of the most influential news websites across the entire technology industry. Business Week named Arrington one of the 25 most influential people on the web, and Techcrunch has even recently shared with Barack Obama and John McCain. Engadget founded by Peter Rojas in 2004 won the Web Blogs Awards that year and each year since. It is offered on many other sites (including GoogleMail) as a default RSS feed, and is published in English, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.

The first question to ask when physically integrating the blog is whether to set it up as subfolder or sub-domain, i.e. domain.com/blog/ or blog.domain.com/. As the real potential of integration is being able to feed new content through established rankings, the sub folder route is probably most appropriate. There are also implications regarding the existing status of the main site. If it is likely that the blog and the main site will be heading off in very different directions on occasions, then a sub-domain approach might be more appropriate.

The next consideration is platform. Be it Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad or any one of a number of packages, SEO Consult will consider the relative advantages and specify the most appropriate software solution. Our extensive experience in both blog integration and Blog Writing makes us a leader in the field.

To find out more about how we can help you create and deliver powerfully effective Blog Integration and Blog Writing, Contact SEO Consult today.