Tag Archive for 'blog'

Killer Content for Your Business Blog

Published
by
geekygirldawn
on February 24, 2009
in Changing leadership
. 1 Comment

Many corporate blogs are neglected, dull, and unimaginative while filled with press release content, marketing fluff, and old content. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Corporate blogs can be interesting and useful with a little focus and time devoted to it. Here are a few tips to help turn your boring corporate blog into something successful.

Content Roadmap

Most companies should create and maintain some type of content roadmap. The content roadmap will usually map out the next 4 weeks of blog posts with an author identified for each post. This helps to ensure that the blog topics are strategically aligned with corporate goals, varied across topics and types of content, and frequent enough to keep the blog active. The person responsible for the blog can work with authors to help identify topics and then make sure that the author has access to everything needed to complete the post (data, technical assistance, etc.)

Spontaneous Posts

Now that you have a content roadmap, you should also diverge from it frequently to allow for serendipitous blogging on hot topics or new ideas that people are passionate enough about to want to talk about them immediately. Monitor popular blogs, news sources, and events in your industry and respond to what others are saying. Join the conversation without waiting for the topic to come up on the content roadmap.

Thought Leadership

The best blogs have content that focuses on thought leadership. Blog about the things in your industry where your employees have expertise that can be shared with the world. Don’t just talk about your products; focus on your entire industry. Get people to discuss a variety of topics and new ideas. Don’t get stuck in a rut where all of your posts have essentially the same or similar content. You are not a thought leader if all of your posts are simply variations on a single idea. Chime in with your thoughts on a variety of topics across your industry.

Conversations

Always monitor and respond to comments on your blog. People get frustrated with blogs where people ask questions or provide feedback in the comments without any response or acknowledgment. Even worse are those companies that moderate every comment and delete anything that they do not agree with. Let people comment and disagree with your ideas. Some of the most interesting conversations happen in the comments of a blog post. You should also monitor what people are saying about you on other blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. and respond where appropriate.

Blogs are Fun

Have fun with your blog, and don’t be so serious all of the time. You can include interesting things that are happening within your company that aren’t necessarily work related (photos from a company ski trip). Admit it; you would rather read a blog post with great content and some humor mixed in, instead of something with great content that drones on and on like an old, boring college lecture. Make the content interesting and fun enough that people will look forward to reading your posts.

Corporate Blogging Tips

Published
by
geekygirldawn
on February 23, 2009
in Changing leadership
. 1 Comment

One of my earlier posts focused on why companies should have a blog, so let’s move past the question of should we blog and on to the discussion of how to write more effective corporate blogs.

Guiding Principles

At this point, I suggest reading my Social Media and Social Networking Best Practices for Business post. Specifically, I covered these guiding principles, which apply not just to blogging, but to other forms of social media as well:

  • Be sincere
  • Focus on the individuals
  • Not all about you
  • Be part of the community
  • Everyone’s a peer

Each of these 5 guiding principles has already been described in detail in my other post, so I won’t spend much more time on them here, but they are important for corporate bloggers to keep in mind.

Strategy and Vision

Blogs are still just another piece of the corporate communications puzzle (although an increasingly important piece), so spending some quality time thinking about what you want to achieve with your overall communication strategy and how blogging fits into that strategy is a good place for companies to start. You don’t want to use your blog to just pimp your products or talk about press releases. A blog can be used for so much more. Think about the areas where you want to lead the industry and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company. Use your blog to become a thought leader in the industry by sharing your expertise on those broad topics that are important and relevant to your company.

Think about who should be blogging on your corporate blog. It is easy to pick your top 5 executives, and give them access to the blog. In some cases, they might be the perfect people, but they aren’t always the best choice when it comes to accomplishing your goals for the blog. Go back to your discussion about your strategy for the blog and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company or your products. Who in your company has expertise in those areas? Do you have someone with great ideas? Are there any evangelists or other employees passionate about those topics? If so, recruit those people to contribute to your blogs. Someone passionate and smart, but outside of the senior management ranks probably has more time to spend on the blog and might just come up with some innovative and interesting ideas.

You should also branch out a little into the realm of unofficial / personal blogs. Encourage your employees to have their own blogs where they talk about their areas of expertise. I have blogged on various corporate blogs for companies and non-profit organizations that I am associated with, but I also continue to blog at Fast Wonder on various topics related to social media, online communities, and other technology topics. Having a personal blog has a number of benefits, including giving us an excuse to learn and research new ideas. Quite a few employees have similar blogs, and I like to believe that some people think that we have interesting things to say, and our companies benefit from having smart people discussing their expertise outside of official work channels. There is also a caution to go along with this. You don’t want to create a personal blog that is too focused on your company. If all you talk about is your company and you cover all of the same topics as your official blog, it just looks forced and insincere. You need to branch out and cover additional topics; show that you are a real person and not just a corporate shill.

Making it Happen

After the initial excitement wears off, it is easy for companies to neglect the corporate blog. We just forget to blog, and before long, no one has posted in a month (or two or three …) In some companies this isn’t a problem. If you already have a bunch of prolific bloggers neglect may not be an issue, but for the rest of you, and you know who you are, it really helps to have someone “in charge” of the blog. This person isn’t responsible for writing all of the content, but they can responsible for herding and nagging in addition to making sure that some specific strategic topics are being addressed on the blog. The role is part strategist and part mother hen (it isn’t all that different from managing communities), so you have to find someone who can think strategically about your industry and the right topics while they follow up obsessively to make sure people are actually posting to the blog.

Corporate blogging is a complex topic, and there will never be one magic formula that applies to all companies. Hopefully, these tips will help a few people make their corporate blogs even better. Keep in mind that you will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them, keep writing, and continue to make incremental improvements.

Sometimes Business Leaders Make a Bad Call

Published
by
Eva Schweber
on February 16, 2009
in Leadership styles
. 1 Comment

Yes, Virginia, business leaders can make mistakes. I’m not talking about the completely mockable faux pas like when the leaders of the auto industry came to Congress with hat in hand and refused a direct request from a congressman to fly home first class on a commercial airline. I’m talking about the small mistakes, like a poorly worded email to a customer mailing list.

Electronic communication is fast, effective and easy to do on the run.  What it does not do well is convey the nuances that come across in speech or the body language that can be seen in a face-to-face encounter.  Without these social cues to check our behavior, some people take license to respond in a way that they never would on the phone or in a face-to-face meeting. So what is a business leader to do when he/she accidentally instigates a flame war through a mis-understood email, tweet or blog post?

In case it is not already obvious, I am referring to a specific incident.  This weekend I received an email from a Web 2.0 business owner that was meant to see how amenable his subscribers would be to adding a nominal monthly fee.  The owner encouraged feedback and discourse by setting up a Google Group and including a link on the email in question.  By this morning, there were several inflammatory and downright nasty responses to the original email, many of whom questioned the “company’s” intentions.  To some, companies are nameless, faceless entities with ill intent.  But in reality, almost all companies (90% of business in Portland have fewer than 100 employees) are run by leaders who are trying to do the right thing.  But like the rest of us, these business leaders are human and will make mistakes.

We all make mistakes.  It is what makes us human.  Sometimes those mistakes are fortuitous an result in useful and exciting innovations, such as post-it notes or the creation of new recipes.  Other times, mistakes are just mistakes.  So the next time a business’ decisions or actions make you angry, try taking a moment to reflect on the humanity of the person who made the decision.  Try giving him/her the benefit of the doubt unless proven otherwise.  And if you are the one who made the bad call, take a deep breath and own up to your mistake. It will help us all to remember that leaders are people too.