As more businesses and brands embrace social media to engage their stakeholders, cleantech companies are often unsure about what steps to take and when. Greenpoint has a dedicated team of consultants within InSocial, our social media hub, to help set the right digital strategy for cleantech clients.

For many cleantech companies a corporate blog makes a lot of sense. It may not be as ‘sexy’ as Facebook, but set up effectively with a clear target audience in mind and an engaging content strategy in place, it will deliver a number of benefits over time.

As a lead consultant in blog development and blogger outreach (the long-term engagement of other bloggers and stakeholders in connecting to our clients’ blogs), I believe there are eight key benefits.

1. Thought Leadership. Blogs allow you to position the company as a thought leader around issues affecting your audiences. Because blogs unlike websites are more personal and engaging (unlike ‘conventional’ websites you can instantly add rich content such as video, audio, podcasts, pictures and links), they can help raise trust levels and increase visibility about the issues that are important to you and your stakeholders.
2. Search Engine Visibility. Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other leading search engines reward websites that are updated often. Blogs are a useful SEO (search engine optimised) tool. An SEO-friendly blog that is updated regularly (tip: between Tuesday to Thursday) will improve the ranking of your company website with search engines. To maximise this, use your own domain for hosting the blog.
3. Enhanced Media Relations. Journalists, especially those on busy news desks at major media outlets, receive hundreds of press releases each day. Many prefer to monitor companies’ blogs for news. Journalists who trust a company for providing balanced and informative information are particularly favourable to blogs, not only for up-to-the-minute news but also for the rich content that they can download from the blog. Therefore, it is critical that a blog is optimised for content to be shared and re-published.
4. Community Building. Blogs work in two ways. First, they allow people to find information about your offer. But second, they allow you to engage with people who post comments. The latter provides a platform to directly interact with ‘posters’. This can increase advocacy and enable you to establish communities of interest around your company.
5. Customer Relationships. Blogs are a useful way to test ideas and concepts. We help clients use their blogs to canvas opinions about clean technology and issues. It’s a fast, accessible and easy way to gain feedback and customer insight.
6. Differentiation. What better way to drive clear water between you and competitors than to provide your audience with an informative, engaging blog, and to widen the gap further in terms of keyword searches about your company, products and category.
7. Human Face. The Carbon Trust recently pointed to only 7% of the UK public trusting companies’ commitments to tackling climate change. There is huge scepticism towards cleantech companies and their claims. Faceless websites pushing out company messages can actually reinforce scepticism. A blog however, enables you to humanise the business, its technology and benefits and provide the feedback mechanisms to encourage two-way dialogue between you and your audiences.
8. Communicate more effectively. A cleantech blog can provide an effective, fast and accessible platform to provide information to your stakeholders. With a well co-ordinated press office or agency managing the blog as part of the company’s corporate communications, you can use a variety of tools to drive traffic to your blog, such as Twitter, LinkedIn or social media news releases. Regular, engaging content is key – get that right and you’ll have a great blog offers you the platform to generate greater word-of-mouth, and conversations on and offline.

A corporate blog requires planning, resources, effort and time, but with a clear strategy the rewards for cleantech companies are many. If you’d like to find out more, you can email me at rafal@greenpointpr.com

Generating heat and power from clean energy sources is a national priority and Myriad CEG, which hired Greenpoint at the start of the year, is in the enviable position of being at the forefront of this cleantech revolution.

And that’s not just good news for Myriad CEG, as it forecasts to more than double the business over the next 12 months and hire a raft of people in different roles, but it’s also good news for the green economy as The Carbon Trust reveals in its latest survey.

Defying the wider economic uncertainty, the survey shows that the UK’s cleantech companies have become more confident about their prospects in the last year with more than three quarters (77 per cent) looking to recruit in the next 12 months, and over a third (37 per cent) planning to expand into new export markets in the next two years. Specific skills in demand are engineering/technical (75 per cent) and sales/marketing (32 per cent).

The companies surveyed listed their own growth prospects, technical strength, current sales pipeline and market position as the key factors driving this optimism. Government legislation and policies, such as the Feed-in Tariff (FITS) scheme, carbon targets and sustainable building regulations, were also given as reasons for confidence.

However, the survey raises potential barriers to growth. First, fundraising is essential for growth – and 29 per cent of the companies interviewed cited a lack of access to finance as the main obstacle to expansion. And second, this issue is even more acute for smaller companies (those with revenues of less than £2 million) where the number of companies concerned about access to finance rose to 40 per cent. Overall, about one in five companies indicated they would consider moving their HQ from the UK mainly owing to funding problems they believed would be less of a problem in other countries.

The research, commissioned by the Carbon Trust and conducted by the Cleantech Group, is the most comprehensive survey of UK cleantech companies this year. It provides insights into the confidence of the British cleantech sector, looking at a range of issues including growth prospects, the place of the UK in the global cleantech market and technology leadership.

Benj Sykes, director of innovations at the Carbon Trust, said: “A thriving UK cleantech sector is essential for green growth in the UK. Our research shows that cleantech innovators are feeling optimistic about their prospects and have ambitious plans for the future. However, access to finance, along with a stable policy environment, will make or break these growth prospects. The sector offers significant expansion opportunity and investors should now seize this to be part of a burgeoning new industry.”

Like Myriad CEG, Econotherm is an example of a cleantech company that is going from strength to strength. The firm doubled staff and turnover in 2010 and predicts equivalent growth within the first half of 2011, with plans to expand its factory in Bridgend.

Based in Wales, it is at the cutting edge of energy efficient technology – the only company of its kind in Europe. Its waste heat recuperators recover heat from industrial furnaces, boilers, ovens, thermal oxidizers and incinerators. The recovered heat is then used to warm air, water or thermal oil, public and operational spaces or even for electricity generation.

Chris Smith, managing director, Econotherm, said: “We are overwhelmed with demand for our products from all corners of the globe including India, Italy, Chile, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Malaysia.

“Our technology can achieve a 15% – 25% reduction on a piece of industrial equipment such as a boiler or furnace. Large energy users in the UK can no longer afford to ignore this opportunity.”

With favourable policies and a framework that supports job creation, the fortunes of the wider economy may well be pinned on cleantech companies like these who owe their success to much more than just hot air.

A version of this article was first published in Human Resources magazine (June 2011).

Greenpoint has been helping Metalysis position its leading-edge, breakthrough technology to the investment and media communities. Here, CEO Mark Bertolini explains the comapny’s game-changing technology for the trillion dollar mining industry at the Objective Capital 2010 Industrial Metals, Minerals and Mineable Energy Investment Summit.

http://www.viddler.com/player/754d22e3/

On Sunday 10th October for 10.10.10′s Global Day of Doing, I will be renewing my pledge to cut my carbon dioxide emissions over the next twelve months.

As a business, we’re already guiding many of our clients towards solutions that tackle climate change. And it’s worth remembering that this is not all about reducing energy. There are many other ways that you can lead a lower carbon lifestyle, none of which involve wearing a proverbial hair shirt. If you are looking for some great ideas that go beyond the obvious, here’s a great place to start your journey.

10:10:10 A GLOBAL DAY OF DOING from 10:10 on Vimeo.