Online reputation management can seem like a Kafka novel sometimes. There are lots of tips, tricks, and best practices that most people who are doing online reputation management agree on, but from time to time problems arise that defy traditional attempts at resolution. However, a sure fire way to improve your company’s online reputation is through the use and power of a blog.

For some companies, blogging may sound like a silly strategy. I mean, you make screws for airplane engines, right? Who wants to read about that? But blogging is about more than writing about your company’s products or reviewing the latest company picnic. Having a company blog can help improve your online reputation in a number of ways.

Tips for Blogging

First of all, you have to shake off the idea that a blog has to be all about your company. Your company has employees, customers, and business partners that are part of a larger group of people who are interested in your niche in general. If you make screws for airplane engines, I’m sure there is a group of designers and engineers out there who might be interested in what you do. Your company blog should be about engaging a specific audience who would be interested in your niche topic in order to raise awareness about your company and its products and services. But it can be a great online reputation management tool as well.

How Blogging Can Boost Your Online Reputation

Here are 3 ways having a company blog can help you with your online reputation management:

1) Gives others something to link to and share

Creating a blog isn’t just writing for the sake of writing. It’s about writing for the sake of being shared and linked to. If you can create good content on your blog—for example, really engaging those designers and engineers with the fascinating world of airplane engine screws—they’ll get a good impression of your company and maybe even link to you from their site or share your posts through social media, giving you some great backlinks and boosting your SEO and online reputation.

2) Creates more pages to rank for

Although Google has recently changed the way it displays sitelinks, your company may not be affected by the change. If that is the case, you may still be able to host your blog on a subdomain and get it ranked for your company name on a search engine results page—taking up one more spot on the first page and push other, negative content down. If you can create some great content that is optimized for your company name as well as for specific content keywords, you can give yourself another positive bump in the search results.

3) It’s an official channel of communication

One of the best things about a company blog is that it is public. A blog gives your company a chance to communicate with the public directly in order to address concerns, problems, and issues that may be plaguing your company’s image. When people have doubts about your company or its products or services, they want them resolved by your company. Addressing those problems on your company blog takes the power away from angry bloggers or “scam alert” sites who want to disparage your company online. When YOU control the message, you can create a positive image for yourself and give people an official source of information they can turn to in order to dispel rumors, myths, and outright lies.

In essence, take control of your company image and reputation by creating a company blog that you can use to communicate directly with the public, so they can share your information, and so they know where to go for official information about your company. All-around, blogging can improve your status with the public and your online reputation.