corporate blogs.
- Choice of blogging platform
- Blog design
- Managing updates
- Choice of host and domain
goals for a corporate blog. After all,
launching a successful blog takes quite a bit of effort, especially if one of
the goals is to create a popular destination.
conceived and built upon a questionable foundation.
Aesthetics
find that many set out without first having a good understanding of what works
well in blogging.
If the mission of your blog is to appeal to people who already have
some familiarity with your company, and if you are trying to attract those who don’t mind getting useful information
from a vendor, then by all means, slap on your logo, and make it look like just
another page of your website. Have your
support people liberally sprinkle the blog with product plugs, salesy advice
and happy talk about success stories.
Blogs can appeal to a wider audience if they achieve
some separation between the company brand and blog. In fact, the words “corporate” and “blog”
should not even go together. Most people
don’t want to go out of their way to read more “corporatese.”
media, and user generated content is that there’s so much information out there
and lots of competition for attention. Information
can come from recognized online media brands, from experts and from people –
disinterested third parties – who have first-hand experience with your product
or service.
With all these choices, why go to a vendor blog when you can
find out what experts and actual customers are saying?
So, unless you are after an extension of your corporate
website sales, marketing and support, one of my first pieces of advice is to
banish the word “corporate” from the whole affair.
Blogging ethos encourages transparency, and communicating in
distinct voices tied to individuals, not to the party line. In fact, you might want to (if you haven’t
already) instead consider focusing your efforts on individual blogs run by the
CEO, or other members of your team.
to a blog run by multiple contributors, most (but not necessarily all) of who
are employed by your company.
The most effective blogs have an attitude, a mission; they
must be about something other than extending the lines of communication from a
company to its publics.
blog. This theme should serve as a good
jumping off point for posts and discussion.
blog brand should not go so far as to deceive or totally obscure the
linkage. I am simply recommending that you
don’t hit people over the head with marketing, and instead use the blog as a
forum for educating and discussing issues that are relevant to your customers.
their online reputations, build credibility, and your company will benefit both by
association and directly, through better understanding of issues that relate to
your product or service in the marketplace.
company blogs, and encourage comments with links to blogs you have seen that
do a good job of it.
