When we launched Something Extra back in May, I had no idea what I was doing, or what I was in for. It was in fact unplanned, as neither the company’s business plan nor marketing plan had any mention of a blog. After all, I left the corporate world to start SNC Destinations, and within the scope of what I knew as “traditional marketing,” blogging had been largely unheard of.
Little did I know that our blog, Something Extra, would become part of the company’s marketing plan, that it would help to increase our ranking on search engines such as Yahoo, or that Something Extra would get twice as many hits as our homepage in a given month. Colleagues from various industries now come to me, asking about blogs, themselves wanting to get started.
I thank Alan, of Alan’s Blogometer, for sharing his Five Steps to Launching Corporate Blogs – key steps that I wish I had when we got started seven months ago. Taking a look at Something Extra, you can see how our blog has evolved, not so much from getting tips like those Alan has provided, but more from following his first two tips, that of getting a feed reader (my preference has been for Attensa for Outlook)and reading blogs, blogs, and more blogs. Fellow bloggers, like Sue Pelletier of face2face, were tremendously helpful in leaving me comments or backtracking to Something Extra, letting us know that we were on the right track.
Taking all the advice that I have in turn been passing on to others, I am finally putting together an eBook that will be available in January, free (offer has ended) to our Newsletter subscribers (yes, we continue to maintain a monthly newsletter!). Reaching Customers and Clients Through Blogs will address all those questions that I had (and did not know to ask) when we got started.
Update: Read Alan’s response
