Greg Hoffman: “The company has been around for 15 years but blogging has helped brand our company as the premier Security Awareness team in the industry; all while saving us time and money.”
You know you can find testimonials from corporate bloggers at this site? Lot’s of different examples to learn from, and here’s another one. Greg Hoffman at The Security Awareness Company, with the blog Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, tells us about their experience – or success, rather.
What do you expect/hope that the blog will deliver in terms of marketing and branding? Something different compared to other ways of communication?
I work for a Computer Security Icon named Winn Schwartau. He’s a very colorful character and a legendary author/writer in the Information Security Industry. During the planning of a marketing strategy for his security awareness company’s new products last spring, I began studying the world of blogs. We had a limited advertising budget so I needed to find a way to connect with the world while using the same style and voice Winn had crafted over the years.
Since then, we quickly created an online community of “security aware” readers. Winn contributes regularly by sharing stories, anecdotes and what I call “relevant rants” about computer, people or physical security threats. We also post trade magazine articles and expert columns to help give our readers the knowledge they need to combat these threats.
This content is the foundation of our monthly newsletter and our bi-weekly blog update, which are emailed to a double opt-in audience. The company has been around for 15 years but blogging has helped brand our company as the premier Security Awareness team in the industry; all while saving us time and money.
Has clients or prospects reacted in any way? What do they think?
Winn received substantial feedback from meeting people at the tradeshows we visited during the fall. I usually get frustrated that we can’t walk ten feet down the aisle of a show without someone stopping to chat with him, but this time, they were talking about the present, mostly, not the past. They were excited about the messages delivered and the general “tone” of the blog.
Winn’s phrase, “Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless” was almost scrubbed internally. Not many of the staff liked it for external use. But I knew that Corporate America would understand and forgive us. The title gave us the edge to be heard amongst the increasing crowd of blogs.
Have you seen any concrete results from your blog?
By measuring the daily, weekly and monthly site statistics of the blog and comparing them to our main site statistics, I can see the increase in traffic to and from both. They feed off of each other. Our active sales leads obviously increase on high traffic days but they also range higher on a daily basis compared to this time last year. The “Open” and “Click” rates of our newsletters are also above average as the audience is passionate about the topic and they are always happy to read and download free materials. Finally, because of the power of blog ranking in search engines, we have seen a surge in requests from subcontractors and Corporate Partners asking to join us in our quest to train the masses about computer security.
I don’t see any change in our Corporate Blog strategy in the near future. The demand is extremely high for the content we provide and computer security threats will only get worse as technology evolves.
Fredrik Wacka is the author and founder of the popular CorporateBlogging.Info blog which is a guide to business and corporate blogging.
Visit Fredrik Wacka’s blog: CorporateBlogging.Info.
