Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website’s alterations. Your new products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog. For example, a car dealer network (No, I’m not going to comment about recent recalls from a particular car company) could communicate the progress it is making on alterations(!) or special offers. For a sales force Business podcasting could inform sales reps / agents of special offers or even a motivational speech to urge the team on to achieve targets.
2. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right?
3. Air your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging.
4. Ensure that you respect your competitors by not slating them!
5. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income.
6. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through with the feedback from your readers.
7. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favourite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.
8. You can use your blogroll or front page link to help you ensure the latter.
9. Recently, I read that the content of your website should consist of at least 60% (in relation to) what you sell (services and products). Blogging should help you communicate more about your brand and value you can give
10. Get your clients involved by communicating case studies

In summary, communicating your business through a blog and corporate podcast can improve dialogue both internally (corporate/charity/organisation’s mission) and externally, to your clients getting a good feeling about your confidence  to provide them with excellent service.

This suggests that there is hope for us who have been excited about the potential of podcasting as a great communication vehicle for corporations. Cynics may suggest that this gives the choice to ignore yet another posting. More optimistic people will take the attitude that it is another form of outreach for corporation executives.

At Knowledge Hemispheres we have always advocated the power to communicate to clients, for example, by featuring common best practice service elements or innovation in the use of products/services (both internally and externally, inc: Partner organisations).

It would be interesting to see if the take-up of podcasting is greater amongst technical organisations. If so, it could be that technical set-up could be faster. However, in all cases it is not about the technology that provides capability but more about the meaning behind the message and the care taken in its construct to make a difference.

Although it suggests surveys. How can you build a bulk of listeners?

My experience has shown that surprisingly, Corporate podcasting is as passive as conventional content viewing, i.e: Although the listeners or viewer is offered a TIVO style experience, a multi-faceted approach must be adopted. This can take the form of complementary support tools, for example:

• Offer a download option minus a pod-catcher site, for example offering a download function to remove dependancy on particular devices
• Offer Listen on-line option on the associated posting for the podcast
• Register at as many podcatcher sites you can.
• Set-up a form of analytics and understand audience behaviour
• Use effective techniques for engaging the audience, for example: breaks, pauses, timing and recordings using good quality equipment.
• Include subscription options for supportive newsletters

Although the posting suggests a survey – good if you can get respondents, the podcast producer has to take a chance on the format and be flexible enough to change it. The survey option would probably work better for internal audience communities.

I wonder if this 11% rise suggests that the new media market place will be able to stand the continual statement, re: the world entering a heavy recessional period?

From a non-commercial context I do consider what I said in a recent statement, re: government departments considering the use of such technologies – this relates to a posting I read about how the UK government are holding New media awareness/training sessions. A few years back, actually as early as 2005 I wrote a paper for one government department on the potential of RSS. It was considered as useful but needed someone to champion it / give it a chance. I called up their marketing department a year later. They said that they had tried Corporate podcasting but it had failed in their view due to inaccessibility. The key point here is the need to consider that although from a non-commercial perspective, advertising revenue is not of concern, what is just as important is the need to consider savings and the cost of paying third party agencies to produce print media that tends to advertise for example, government project successes or updates.

From a commercial perspective a lot will dependant on the type of organisations that consider value from this type of marketing / advertising. It will require clearer descriptions on what a multi-channel strategy can deliver. Maybe the fact that it track-able and had greater international reach will also help. Recently we consulted with a firm that were spending huge amounts on Pay Per click. Their backward links consisted of a single online site. In addition, although they had lots of video talking about the confidence of their medical procedures, they were not utilising multiple channels to market. Their advertising was blended, incorporating radio and print media.

What I find difficulty with is the possibility that New media is sometimes perceived to be threathening rather than complementary. In another example, Knowledge Hemispheres have contacted publication houses and suggested that their print media could be complemented with new media, for example a podcast that has special/exclusive features, advert insertion and previews or incentives for people to purchase the extended / actual print version. They also suggest a online advertising placement rate card, similar to pricing matrix typically used to sell printed classifieds.

In summary, I’m optimistic about these figures, especially in the recent development and take-up of mobile and push-type technologies. At last people are using RSS readers on their cell phones and making available corporate blogs. What we need now is for some bold companies to integrate develop mash-up strategies to ensure that they can communicate better both internally and externally – Let us also not forget the importance of subtle advertising too ! Now that is a different matter, especially with the poor reputation of pop-ups and recent surveys suggesting that sms advertising can be annoying…