Why most company blogs suck. Why this one won’t.
- Thursday, 13 March 2014 08:20
- Written by Greg Branch
Yes, we said it right up front: Most company blogs suck. For a number of reasons:
1. They're trying to sell. People go to your company blog for your expertise or for entertaining glimpses of your corporate world. If you want people to read your blog, you need to do one (or more) of four things:
- Help them learn how to be better at their jobs, hobbies or relationships
- Give them information and facts they will find interesting and enlightening
- Tell them a story that will make them laugh or cry
- Show them pictures of a grumpy-looking cat …
If you want people to avoid your blog, use it to deliver your sales pitch. If you want them to return to it again and again, teach them, entertain them, or both.
2. They aren’t fully committed to the relationship. How many times have you visited a corporate website, clicked on the “blog” link and found an article that was a year or two old?
When people are counting on you for expertise and entertainment, you need to deliver. Regularly. How often isn’t as important as the fact that you are adding content on a regular basis.
A company’s blog is like your marriage. Yes, it will exist if you only pay attention to it once or twice a year. But you won’t be getting anything out of it, and neither will your spouse.
3. They don’t have a voice. Somebody, at some point, wrote the post. But by the time it went through layers of management (and legal!), it became as dry as a Kalahari breeze: sentence after sentence of corporate buzzwords, passive voice and stilted language.
The most successful company blogs either have their own unique, distinctive (and entertaining) voice, or they use bylines and encourage the authors of individual posts to use their unique voices. Your company’s blog is not a legal brief. It’s not a research paper. Use the power of the language to make it shine.
4. They treat the Internet as a one-way street. A blog — especially when paired with social media — is a form of two-way communication. You’re offering your expertise. Your readers should have an opportunity to comment, ask a follow-up question or, in a perfect world, become a customer. Allow your readers to communicate back with you — and accept the fact that they might not always agree with you.
This blog won’t suck
We have a lot of smart people at AMPM, and they know a whole heap about business communications. Some of them have been in the business darn near since Gutenberg’s time, and they have a lot of interesting stories to tell. Others are younger and more deeply in touch with today’s — and tomorrow’s — communication trends and have a lot of advice to offer.
That’s the extent of our sales pitch.
Our blog is a place where those people — as well as the occasional guest author — will share their knowledge and some of those interesting stories. We might offer a look at work we’ve done, but usually as it relates to an interesting “how it happened” tale, an important lesson, or a peek behind the curtain.
And it’s a place where you can feel free to ask us questions, offer your comments or disagree.
Because, in the end, our blog isn’t about AMPM. It’s about better communication. We firmly believe that communication grows businesses, builds economies, solves problems, saves lives and makes the world a better place. And one of the reasons we’re here is to help people communicate better.
