Assessing your competition's blog

I speak with most clients about the utility of blogging and the relevant SEO value it brings. This is the easiest way to get new content on your website, and it is usually one of the busiest pages on a website -- because people know it gets updated.

There are lots of articles on the best approaches to blogging. I read a number of them to see what's the latest thinking on these topics. This morning I read an interesting checklist for rating your competitor's blog. Click the link below for a methodology to employ from Digital Relevance in comparing your blog to your competition.

Competitor Blog Assessment

How much do you try to control your message?

In a previous life, I worked as the Director of Marketing for a software company. We’d been bought and sold a couple times by multinational corporations. Given our competitors were having a field day spinning our story to their advantage, I kept strict control on the message that we pushed out.  As an engineering company, we had a lot of bright people – admittedly busy, bright people –- that I could have leaned on to contribute to a corporate blog. I opted not to at the time.

My decision today would be very different. While ensuring a corporate policy on blogging would be in place, I would recommend a blog for all technology companies. My reasoning:

• The conversations will happen (either on your blog or somewhere else). Wouldn’t you prefer to be aware of it?
• Your customers are on the web....you should be engaging them in one-on-one conversations where possible. It’s cheaper than flying to a tradeshow.
• Thought leadership content. Blogs will naturally gravitate to topics near and dear to your customers. These key words, and the related links to and from other industry sites will help with your own site's ranking for key search words

There are too many conversations taking place on the internet to limit them to “off corporate site”.  All technology companies, if they haven’t already, need to start blogging to set up a direct dialogue with their customers and prospects.