Source: Q Academy (2017)

So, you want your audience to participate with your business more, right? And you want there to be more feedback on your social media content, am I close? Well look no further, I’m here to help you with your blogging in order to improve audience participation and feedback.

How to Blog (well) – The Important Stuff

Gilbert et al. (2016) recognised that to blog effectively, one must first become a respected online community member who leaves a distinctive value-added imprint online.

I’m guessing it isn’t just enough for me to tell you how to blog? You want to know how to blog well and to become a respected online community member, am I right?

Well look no further, below are some quick tips on how to blog well to increase audience participation and feedback:

1. Create a Family Feel – Rowse (2009) encourages bloggers to build a sense of a family within the blogosphere. To achieve this, you must encourage readers to post comments, craft reader-centred posts, encourage reader generated content, act as a cheerleader (praise your customers/readers) and provide readers with multiple ways to ‘join’ your blog.
2. Engage – Blog in a consistent manner on multiple venues, respond to reader comments, comment on similar blogs, post at times when readers are most likely to be online, post in the right places (links on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc.) and run promotions to excite readers Gilbert et al. (2016).
3. Don’t Hard Sell – Don’t just write a promotional piece about one of your products, instead discuss issues that are not directly related to a product but instead something which relates to your company’s audience Cass (2007).

Just by implementing the above 3 tips and doing the things they suggest, slowly but surely you will be able to increase audience participation as well improving customer feedback (once you’ve captured your audience).

Risks (and what not to do)

Blogging isn’t completely without risks. Below are a few things you should be aware of:

1. Legal Liability – Don’t copy or link existing blogs or other content if you don’t have permission from the original source as this can cause copyright infringement issues. Klosek (2006). This has a knock-on effect on audience participation and customer feedback due to your brand image being tarnished with legal issues.
2. Outside Blogs – Although it’s customer feedback that you want, outside blogs allow customers to voice complaints to the whole world (including your audience). More importantly experts in your field can criticise your company and your products directly (it is safe to assume they’ll have a big following. One more player in the outside blog field is your competitors they can purposely try to tarnish your name, even going as far as hiring someone to leave negative comments and reviews on your blog Cox et al. (2008)
3. Ethics (Astroturfing) – ‘What the heck is astroturfing?’ I can imagine is your first question. Before we get to that lets stick with ethics as a whole. As a blog can be purely based on your opinion it is easy to try to take ‘shortcuts’ or ‘cheats’ to take your company to the next level in the ‘blogosphere’ (Don’t be one of those companies). Now, ‘Astroturfing’ is the fabrication of a grassroots marketing campaign Carmichael & Helwig (2006), where seemingly genuine authors of blogs are actually paid by companies to create seemingly spontaneous campaigns for them. This is incredibly shady and if caught can ruin your whole reputation, so to keep it simple, just don’t do it!

Source: Mousa (2017)

Fixes for the risks

For Legal Liability – Develop a system for monitoring your company’s blogs for any content that violates terms of use or any applicable laws (copyright etc.) Klosek (2006)

For Outside Blogs – Monitor the ‘blogosphere’ and create communication strategies to deal with potential threats Cox et al. (2008)

For Ethics – Just don’t partake in Astroturfing!

The Verdict

So, as you can see, the potential of blogging to increase your audience participation and feedback is phenomenal (and free) and if you’re careful you can easily negate the risks outlined in this blog (although keep your eyes peeled on outside blogs).

Source: Taylor (2013)

I hope this post has helped you and as always thanks for reading,

Haydn

Bibliography

Carmichael, J. & Helwig, S. (2006) Corporate Weblogging Best Practices: A Guide for Enterprises Seeking to Leverage Corporate Blogs, University of Wisconsin-Madison E-Business Consortium.

Cass, J. (2007) Strategies and tools for corporate blogging. Burlington, MA: Elsevier

Cox, J.L., Martinez, E.R. & Quinlan, K.B. (2008) Blogs and the corporation: managing the risk, reaping the benefits. Journal of Business Strategy. Vol 29, No 3, pp4-12

Gilbert, J.A., Clark, D. & Roy, D.P. (2016) Blogging: What’s All the Fuss? S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal. Vol 81, No 4, pp4-15

Klosek, J. (2006) The legal risk of blogging. Network World. Vol 23, No 6, pp31

Mousa (2017) What Are the Risks of Gearing? [Online] Available at <https://lifesumo.com.au/2017/09/05/what-are-the-risks-of-gearing/> [Accessed 7^th February 2018]

Q Academy (2017) Blogging for Business [Online] Available at <http://qacademy.ca/blogging-for-business/> [Accessed 7^th February 2018]

Rowse, D. (2009) Eight tips for building community on your blog [Online] Available at <https://problogger.com/8-tips-for-building-community-on-your-blog/> [Accessed 7^th January 2018]

Taylor, S. (2013) three Questions You Should Ask Your Graphic Designer [Online] Available at <http://www.loveidee.com/blog/three-questions-you-should-ask-your-graphic-designer/> [Accessed 7^th February 2018]