Did you know the latest prediction is that corporate blogs will be more powerful and influential than websites in only two years’ time?  And, that almost 89 per cent of journalists are using them for their research.  That’s a scary thought  -  especially if you haven’t got one!

New blogs are being created every minute but not all appear to be hitting the mark. When we launched the whatifspecialist blog last year we did some research first. Here are some suggestions to help you get started.

Listen before launching

• Listen to what your customers and prospects and stakeholders are saying about you onlineUse Google’s blog search tool and type in your business name, products and competitors http://blogsearch.google.com
• search who is linking to your website and discussing it http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
• Once you know who is talking about you and where your traffic is coming from, you can develop a plan on where to focus your online campaign.

Here are our top tips to getting started

• To Blog or Not to Blog – understand your objectives and why you want to start a blog. You can’t just divorce your blog.

• Establish a blog team – recruit key experts and executives (including your CEO) to sit on the blogging team to provide expertise and insight in several different categories.

• Define a Blogging Process – outline an editorial process and educate the bloggers on how the process works.  Someone needs to own it and make sure the content is approved before each blog gets posted so it’s within your company standards and message.

In part two we’ll outline the foundations of a good blog.