Accomplishing thought leadership online can be tricky, but is invaluable for gaining credibility and awareness for your organization, and yourself.
By Brian Muys
Associate Vice President of Public Relations at APUS
Online Career Tips Guest Contributor
In their haste to embrace the new media vogue, many organizations have made the fundamental mistake of initiating a blog, Facebook page or LinkedIn group merely for the sake of doing so or, worse, as a thinly veiled veneer for larger marketing purposes. Credibility is king in the blogosphere, and this discerning community tends to turn a sharply critical and unforgiving eye on those authors or posters it deems overly self-serving.
Blogs often are a platform to discuss issues affecting an industry, and it’s critical for anyone seeking to gain mindshare with the media, industry peers, competitors, customers or other key stakeholders to share creative, if not provocative, ideas. While the blogosphere by design encourages healthy discourse in such cases, it’s important that the author be buffered from the inevitable spammers and those whose contrarian opinion and agenda may overstep the minimum necessary bounds of decorum.
It’s critical to assign a moderator as a precaution against potential “rogue” postings by adversarial or disgruntled individuals with any form of malicious intent. This proactive role is even more critical when working with public companies or those subject to the more discriminating scrutiny of government decision-makers.
It’s equally important that the blogger be mindful of any pointed, unfounded criticism that may potentially offend or alienate these individuals. Commenting on highly contentious issues can potentially damage or undermine valuable stakeholder relationships.
Maximizing both visibility and credibility for you and your blog is essential. Here are a few suggestions:
- Identify the most visible and widely-read bloggers in business, media or the government (if any) commenting on issues related to your industry or profession and make a point to respond to their own postings to establish a dialogue. You can use blog directories or aggregators, like Technorati, or RSS (really simple syndication).
- Promote your blog and reinforce your personal brand within your email signatures, company boilerplate in press releases and on your company Web site to drive additional traffic and potential lead generation with prospects. It is also a good idea to add a link to your blog when you post on other blogs.
- Register and cross-list your blog for maximum viral marketing impact on social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us to help drive traffic.
Benchmarking readership is a key element of measuring the impact of your blog. You can monitor awareness and response to your postings at regular intervals through frequency and click-throughs to your Web site, for example. Remember that awareness and credibility take time to develop. Don’t despair if your first foray into the blogosphere isn’t deemed a success.
A blogging campaign is a low-risk, low-cost endeavor that can be fine-tuned and, worst case, simply put on hiatus or discontinued as circumstances warrant.
About the Author:
Brian Muys is associate vice president of public relations for American Public University System. He has nearly 30 years of experience in developing and implementing earned/social media relations, corporate and internal communications programs for public and private organizations. He received an English degree from Dickinson College and an MS in Communications from the American University Kogod School of Business.
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