Page 20 - MetalForming October 2010

Michael Bleau has served manufacturing and consumer- related industries since 1986. Prior to forming Industry Scope, a strategic b2b and b2c sales and marketing consultancy, in 2002, he held executive positions for several automation and press manufacturers. Michael regularly consults with manufacturing companies on strategic planning, sales and marketing, brand and product development, PR and sales-channel development. Industry Scope
tel. 810/397-1429
mbleau@industry-scope.com www.industry-scope.com
Frequently, I’m asked just how ‘social’ manufacturing companies should become, to which I reply, as much as the market will bear. If there is value to what you have to say, then say it or someone else will take the lead from you. Corporations are getting into blog- ging and leveraging social media outlets. While still only a fraction of their media spend, the growth trend on blogs con- tinues to be positive.
When well executed, this type of website enhancement can be used to educate consumers, create excitement about products and services with cus- tomers and grow your direct e-mail lists. They also can be used internally to com- municate company news to employees.
Establishing a blog for your busi- ness is another means of pushing fresh content to prospects while building search-engine relevance for your com- pany’s website. In the coming months, we’ll cover other social media options, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Types of Blogs
To borrow from Wikipedia, a weblog is a web application that contains peri- odic posts on a common webpage. These posts are often but not necessar- ily in reverse chronological order. Basi- cally, if you publish written content on a periodic basis, a blogging software package simplifies your publishing workflow. There are a few variations to this, including podcasting (which has nothing to do with Apple Computer’s iPod products.) Podcast means playable on demand, where the author posts audio and/or video streams.
Video blogging, sometimes called v- logging or vidblogging, is simply a video webcast. A great example of a promo- tional vidblog, for the perfect blend of
b2b and b2c customer targets, can be found at willitblend.com. Audio and video blogs are more advanced and require some additional software, skill and effort, but each offers subscribers options in terms of how they like to consume content. In either case, a writ- ten form of the blog is always recom- mended as a part of a search-engine optimization strategy. To learn more about being a search-engine-friendly blogger, Google “how to optimize your blog for search engines.”
Blog Hosting Options
A quick way to launch a blog is to use a hosted service. There are many host- ed options that offer simple to use, cus- tomizable blog sites, including Type- Pad, Blogger and LiveJournal. You have the option to link to these from your company’s website and they typically offer a simple interface for posting con- tent. Many allow you to customize the layout and masthead so that the blog can seamlessly look like a part of your website. Such services are managed for you, so you don’t have to deal with IT issues and you can start posting within minutes of signing up for an account. Many of these services are free, but some may charge a monthly fee. A risk with using some services is that they own the content you post, and should they elect to, they have the right to remove content or take down your blog.
If you maintain your own web serv- er and want complete control of your blog installation, you’ll want to consid- er a self-hosted package. Some popular choices include Movable Type, Word- Press (used by PMA) and Textpattern.
Next month we’ll dive deeper into blogging, covering content, frequency and promotion. MF
18 METALFORMING / OCTOBER 2010
www.metalformingmagazine.com
THE BUSINESS OF METALFORMING MICHAEL BLEAU
More on Social Media: Blog Basics—Part 1