Guest blogger Kate Elzer-Peters is the Social Media Marketing Coordinator at The Queensboro Shirt Company, located in Wilmington, NC. She coordinates Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the company News page of the website, Queensboro Out and About (the public service arm of Queensboro), and other outreach activities. She also blogs, markets and writes for companies around the world at thegardenofwords.com, her PR and marketing business.

Taking Customers “Behind the Seams”

In mid-2008, we launched the official blog of The Queensboro Shirt Company, “Behind the Seams: The Queensboro Blog.” It is hosted on Wordpress.com, which allows us to take advantage of search engine indexing and cross-promotion with other blogs. Since its beginning, we’ve posted 253 blogs, received tens of thousands of views, and experienced a large amount of search traffic resulting in referrals to our main site, www.queensboro.com.

The fun of the blog is that its less formal nature allows us to show the fun side of Queensboro – pictures, videos, customer testimonials and more. The blog puts faces to the names of Customer Service Representatives, Merchandising, Graphic Artists, and Sales Representatives that our customers work with daily. One of my all-time favorite corporate blogs is “Nuts about Southwest,” the blog of Southwest Airlines. I don’t even fly Southwest because they don’t operate out of our tiny airport in Wilmington, NC, but I love reading their blog. It has a very personal feel, which is the aim of all of their marketing initiatives.

“Kate the Blogger”

I am the primary blogger, and am known to the Queensboro community as “Kate the Blogger.” I could go by my first and last name, which most people would recommend, but at the beginning of the blog, it was decided that all of the bloggers would go by their first name, only, so we’ve stayed with that. Because I’m also so active on behalf of Queensboro on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, I still have a “human presence,” which is so important in blogging and social media activities.

“Be a human” is the most important piece of advice I’d impart to any company considering a blog. This means that you need to allow your bloggers to express a point of view and write with personality. Before setting them loose on a blog, you’ll want to define the point(s) of view from which your bloggers will write, so that everyone stays “on message.” Each blogger can develop his or her own voice, but the general “feeling” of the blog will be consistent.

Editorial Oversight

What we’ve learned is that it is important to have someone within the organization that has a good feel for social media activities and a sense of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. That is something not easily taught. I’m careful, in my online presence for Queensboro and for myself, not to talk disparagingly about customers, clients, and my employers. The Queensboro Blog is NOT the time or place to vent any grievances I might have. Neither is my personal Twitter feed. What goes out into the internet becomes practically fossilized into existence.

The blog is edited by our copy and promotions editor. She looks over each post after it is published for copy editing, writing that is unclear and any red flags. If I’m about to discuss something that I feel could become controversial, or is pushing the envelope, I consult with her and with my supervisor before posting.

Popular Topics

Our most popular posts are our informational posts. We receive a lot of search traffic from people looking for information about logos, parts of a shirt, parts of a hat, and apparel definitions. “Pique my Interest” about the definition of a “pique knit,” vs. the phrase “pique my interest,” is the most viewed. Other posts with a lot of hits, and clicks to our main website, are those about corporate logo gifts, family reunion shirts, and chili cook-off shirts.

Providing our customers with information about how to use the products we provide, in a non-sales format, helps Queensboro and our customers. Giving people a reason to come back to the blog and visit, just to see what’s going on, increases the chances that they’ll click through and browse on the main site.

Learning to Let Go

Probably the most important thing for any business considering a leap into blogging is to let go of their fear to put content that isn’t highly stylized or sales-oriented out on the web. Businesses have to learn to let go of their need for instant results. They have to let go of traditional measurement techniques and commit to it for the long haul.

A blog, or Twitter campaign, or Facebook page is not successful overnight. It is a process of relationship-building between the blogger/tweeter/facebooker and the customer or potential customer. These interactions take place in real time, in the time it takes for someone to click their mouse away from your website and over to your competitors. Identifying someone in the organization who is authentically enthusiastic about the company, a good written communicator, and with a good sense of what is appropriate and what isn’t is key. Hovering at his or her elbow is not.

Businesses with a friendly, approachable presence online via a blog or other social media site reach customers in a way that isn’t possible with “old school” advertising. Can it be risky? Yes. But not as risky as letting someone else control the conversation about your brand.