Where should the blog be?

Posted by Natasha D'Souza on Nov 4, 2009 in Blog, social media 101, Wordpress | 2 comments

Samantha asked several questions via Facebook. Since these questions need somewhat of a long answer I thought that I would address it here.

In a social media marketing training session yesterday I talked about the concept of integrating a blog to a company website.

So how does Bando integrate their blog into their website?

Here is what needs to be done in this case.

Currently Bando promotions has a website.

and a blog

As you can see the blog is on eBlogger and has very different branding than that of the organization.

To the user or potential customer coming to this blog is very confusing as there is no logical way to get back to the Bando website.

Recognizing this they have taken steps to rectify this situation.  The blog tab has been added to their website however this links to the blog that is sitting on eblogger!! Since this is a brand and needs to be consistent with their branding both online and off line, this is not the best setup for them.

So they need to upload wordpress to their existing website server. The look and feel needs to integrated together into whatever template appeals to them.

So when someone clicks on the blog tab at the Bando site they should see either http://www.blog.bandopromotions.com/ or http://www.bandopromotions.com/blog

or something along those lines.

Once this has be done what happens to the existing blog posts?

They can be imported into the new blog. The old blog can be deleted from eBlogger.

If the above steps are executed the end result should be when someone clicks on the blog it feels like it’s part of the website.

Take a look at the Virtual EyeSee website as an example of this.

The second questions was

“However, for our Pure Iron Athletics line we need to know if that is the same route we should be taking. Here is the site www.pureironathletics.com We want to add a blog mainly for a source for our customers that don’t have facebook or twitter and want to share their thoughts and opinions online. This will benefit us as a brand for marketing our products better.”

This question is very tricky as based on these requirements it looks like you want to build a microsite/community around your product and a blog is just one tool in which to achieve this. However not having had a detailed conversation with Samantha about their overall business goals I can’t provide the best solution.

If I were to focus just on the Blog part then the answer would be yes, do integrate the blog into the website.