"I'd love to be able to describe a blog as an all-powerful 'magic wand,' which will single-handedly solve all your marketing woes," says Mark White. But of course he can't. "Any company thinking of running [a blog] in splendid isolation is just guilty of actively stopping it from fulfilling its full potential," he cautions.

Instead, he makes the case for how the corporate blog can be an effective component of an overall marketing mix. His tips on how to make blogging work best for you:

• Use the blog to coordinate the different components of your marketing mix online, and gather the responses it generates.
• This coordination should happen at the start of your marketing initiatives, says White, so the main interlinking is "set out in advance, and all of the marketing strands can work in tandem."
• If you're using the blog for customer-service or product-development reasons, then integrate it with your call center, or your marketing team's campaigns. Above all, don't let it be "stuck out on a limb under the control of a separate department," he warns.

"Use the information that your customers provide through [the blog], and share it with others. Treat it as the tool that it is, rather than a solution to all ills," he concludes.

The Po!nt: Your daily musings are not the blog-all-and-end-all, OK? But a corporate blog can serve as a vital online conduit for your customer-service and marketing efforts. The key is to coordinate its content with other departments' initiatives.

Source: Better Business Blogging. Read the full post here.

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