Writing a corporate blog to supplement your business blog marketing plan is a great idea in this day and age of relationship marketing, and can bring huge dividends in the areas of branding, customer loyalty, retention and expansion. Let's take a quick look at some of the things that are involved with a corporate blog, and also some of the ways you can use one to get some the benefits mentioned.

First, there is the question of where your corporate blog resides. You can either have it on your main site, or on another domain. The first choice makes it easier on you, as you only have to maintain the one domain, but I think the advantages of hosting your blog on a separate domain outweigh having it on the primary domain. The main reason is that you can garner additional link weight for either site, as they will be interlinked, and indeed you can have links to each of them in your navigation. The other primary reason is that you can make use of additional keywords and URLs in your promotional efforts. This may seem minor, but every bit helps.

Writing for a corporate blog needs to be discussed as well. You need to decide the tone, familiarity, and interactivity your blog will feature, and make sure the writer is intimately aware of just how you'd like this to be done. If you are seeking a more formal tone, a folksy aw shucks post just may be off-putting to some of your readers. Make sure that whoever writes the posts has all the technical and business info they need before attempting to blog about your business. Come across as shallow or uninformed and they will leave in droves.

You also need to decide on the frequency of the posts. While it might seem that a corporate blog might not be updated as often as a personal or marketing blog, you'd be surprised. A thriving business in a bustling market has plenty to talk about.

If you can find the right person to write your blog, some of the benefits you'll experience will be things like greatly improved customer retention. People stick around when they can see that not only are they cared for, but they can actually voice their opinion thru the use of Polls, blog comments, read interesting content, and receive great customer care. This kind of approach will also pay off in the area of business expansion. Mention upcoming products, events, promotions and specials, and make an incentive for bringing in new customers, and see how viral your blog posts can become!

Maintaining a blog for your business will also go a long way towards helping with the branding of your company. The more the word gets out, and the more that your business is on other people's lips and fingers, the better off you'll be. You can only do so many press releases! Let you blog speak daily for you!