Thinking about launching a company blog? Great, now if you want to avoid being “that guy,” then here’s the essential elements that you should incorporate into your blog.
1 – A strategy. Why are you blogging? What are you attempting to do with your blog? Establish your company as an industry leader? Boost your brand awareness? Provide customer service? Know what you want to accomplish with your blog, and make sure that your goals are consistent with your overall business strategy.
2 – A dedicated group of bloggers. If you only have one blogger, or if you have five, every blogger needs to know what is expected of them, and what their role is. If each blogger needs to write 2 posts a week, they have to be willing to give you 2 posts a week.
3 – A posting schedule. This ties in with #2. Ideally, a company blog should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is usually too much. Make sure each blogger knows how many posts a week/month they are responsible for, and have the posts up on a set pattern. Don’t have the bloggers put them up whenever inspiration strikes, that’s how you end up with 2 posts a week; one on Thursday night at 10:46pm, the other on Sunday at noon. Set up your posts to run in the middle of the week, and then move outward. Tues, Weds, and Thursday are usually the best days for traffic, so schedule posts to run these days, usually around 10am-noon.
4 – A comment policy. Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments. When Shelia leaves a comment at 3am Saturday morning, will it be noon on Monday till it’s approved? You need to know this. For extra credit, list it on the blog itself.
5 – An ‘About Us’ section. Tell me who you are, what you do, and how I can get in touch with you. Gotta have this. For extra credit, add a section explaining what your blog is about.
6 – Pictures and bios for EVERY blogger. Again, this is non-negotiable. I need to be able to SEE who every blogger is, and I need to know their background. Gotta have this.
7 – A blogroll with NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading. Sure you can add your website, but please mix in some non-company sites as well.
8 – RSS subscriber buttons. Give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, via a feed reader, or email. Feedburner can help you set up both, go to Feedburner.com and set yourself up a free account, if you haven’t already. A small section explaining what RSS is and the advantages of subscribing would be a nice touch as well.
9 – A section for Recent Comments. This isn’t a ‘must have’, but it’s a really nice way to put the focus on your readers, and it also gives them an idea of which posts are getting the most attention.
10 – A personal touch. Be human. Refer to commenters by name. Say ‘thank you’ early and often. Ask for feedback, and opinions. Remember that ultimately, people don’t want to connect with companies, we want to connect with people.
What did I miss? If your company blogs, what are some other elements that you believe are vital to your blogging efforts? Which of these are most important?
A good list, Mack. Here’s something else: Don’t only and always talk about *your* company and its products and services. Spread the wealth.
Far better to be a “champion of your industry,” as Twist Image’s Mitch Joel likes to say. Write about news and trends in your company’s vertical, even when it doesn’t involve your company directly. Mention and, yes, link to the competition if they’re doing something newsworthy. Praise others.
As for the About Us section, check out this post that Zach Braiker just wrote: http://quiverandquill.com/2008/11/about-about-us-pages/ It’s not about blogs per se, but includes relevant takeaways.
Bryan Person| @BryanPerson
LiveWorld
Nice article. The other thing that I would think about as far as comments is not moderating them before they are posted, but only doing moderations AFTER. If you review all comments before they are posted, you remove the instant gratification part of commenting, and you can interrupt conversations among commenters. Sure, a few bad comments will slip through, but that reflects poorly on the commenter, not the company/blog. Just delete them afterwards.
Most company blogs get little traffic and even fewer comments, so you want to do eveything you can to get the discussion going. Allowing comments to post instantly (and then reviewing them afterwards) really helps.
Mack (and commentators) – Nice post. I am in process of rolling out a company blog for our site and really appreciate the head’s up. The comments section I do believe is important. I also understand why some companies (if not most) are scared to do it. After the blog, I’m thinking of the merits of a forum.
Great post. I agree with what Mike said about moderating comments after they’re posted. I’ve been to blogs and have had to wait days for my comment to post. Needless to say, I didn’t return to those blogs.
So, Mack… when are you going to do an online seminar on this topic for us? Hmmm? (She says, tapping a toe.)
Let’s get the ball rolling! Our members would love to hear pointers like these. So would I.
Thank you for sharing, Mack. I’ll definitely link back. Best!
Hey Mack,
Really helpful post, the company I work for is looking to roll out blogs as well as a forum and this advice is really useful!
Cheers!
Thank you very much, Mack, for this practical guide.
Also in the process of establishing a corporate blog strategy, I found #3 “Posting Schedule” of particular interest, since I would have underestimated that aspect.
But 2 concerns remain unsolved for me by now, which address more #2 “A Dedicated Group of bloggers”:
1. If you address an audience of managers AND developpers for a software company, what is the ideal blogger profile? 2 bloggers with different angles (one more technical and one more “business issues oriented”)? Knowing that the main blogger would be a “Marketing Girl”, do you think that would make them run away?!
2. Another issue is the language: if you address communities in different countries speaking different languages, what would be the best take: one blog/blogger per country? Translated posts but leading to weaker relationships?
By those 2 not extensive examples I am personnally facing right now, I think that the blogger-s profile according to the audience’s profile could be developped. In a next post?
Thank you once again for the insightful posts, comments, etc..
Great post! It’s nice and simple and hits all the major points. Claudia, I like the idea of having multiple blog contributors who write from different areas of expertise. A subscriber to the blog could subscribe to all contributors or just a few, based on topic interest.
Bryan you’re exactly right, I often say that cos should promote themselves, but should instead promote content that their readers can find value in. If they do this, the blog indirectly becomes a promotional tool for them.
Mike I agree with you, when a blog starts there’s going to be little to no traffic at first, and it will take the spammers a while to ‘discover’ it. But I also know that many cos are already worried about what their readers might say, and the thought of a potentially obscene comment appearing on the blog for a day or more before they catch it, scares them to death. It really depends on the comfort level of the co. Ideally I’d go with no moderation so comments can get up quickly.
Claudia, another key consideration is to pick bloggers that actually ENJOY blogging and interacting with your customers. These are the people that will write with more passion, and will be willing to stick with the blogging, while a less enthusiastic blogger won’t want to crank out 1-2 posts a week, or whatever their quota is.
As for the language your bloggers speak, I think it depends on your resources, and your customer base. If you do much of your business in France (for example), and have 5 bloggers that can commit to your blog, and 2 are fluent in French, you might want to break off into two different blogs, one English, one in French. Or if you can only do one blog, you might have a weekly series where you address issues that are relevant to the French community and marketplace.
Shelly, I have NOT forgotten about the online seminar! I currently have a few big projects I am trying to get sorted out for the next few months and when I have a better idea of what next month is looking like for me, I’ll be in touch shortly! Thanks!
Hi Mack, this is really outside the scope of your article, but I think it ties into the launch of a corporate blog. Companies need to account for the blogger’s time in the community. Your dedicated bloggers need to not only spend time writing but also reading, commenting and linking to other blog posts. Keeping that within the scope of the launch helps to better account for resources.
Mack:
I took a different tack on this topic back in August after reading an abstract of a Forrester report showing declining interest in blogging among B2B companies.
I sampled some of the bigger tech names to see what i would find. They violated just about all of your ideas, but I also found the content sorely lacking.
I came up with 5 (bad) types:
- Senior Executive Speech Blogging
- Crowd Blogging
- Pitch/Press Release Blogging
- Product Tutorial Blogging
- Random/Ooops Blogging
It comes back to your original point of “strategy.” Perhaps it needs another sentence or two about “how to manage the content to achieve alignment with the blogging strategy.
Really great post, thank you so much. I too have just started my blog and as a graphic designer I am having a hard time finding focus. I work with small businesses and restaurants. Sometimes I focus on business tips for them, sometimes inspiration, interesting articles, sometimes client examples. I figure if I just keep posting articles that I enjoy, my blog personality will show through, not sure if this is the case. I would love input. Thanks again for the direction.
Thanks, Mack – this is a keeper. Very interesting opinions on the moderated vs. unmoderated comments issue. Mike has a great point about the instant gratification, but with SEs caching pages so quickly, I’m in the camp that favors businesses taking the more cautious approach.
So on that note, are there comment filters that can put the suspect comments (foul language, repeat abusers, link spam) into a to-be-moderated folder?
I also found these guidelines helpful, as well as three tips from P. J. Fusco in Jan. 08 -
- Plan to spend an equal amount of time reading and posting to other relevant blogs
- Add in time to get internal legal review (as needed)
- For quality, budget at least 10-hours/week.
Mack,
All great suggestions I implemented on goandychurch.blogpost.com. Have since elected to move my blog persona to whyhire.me. It will take some time to implement this again, but worth the effort. Thanks for sharing.
Great post Mack. The good news for me is that we’re following most of your guidelines on our blog project. That still doesn’t mean that I’ve got a blog that ticks along like clockwork. The dedicated blogging team concept with line of business people who contribute is the most challenging aspect of running a successful blog.
Getting and keeping the interest of smart people who ‘like to blog’ over the long haul is difficult to sustain. Just when you think you’ve got people hooked on blogging and committed, you can go through serious lulls in content. My Rah, Rah, Go Blogging speeches fall on deaf ears when there are a million other priorities on their desks.
For those of us who don’t write for a living, taking on a blog can seem daunting. I’ve found that being on Twitter has helped me because it forces me to write on a regular basis. Practice helps.
Great article. As a business coach, I get asked by clients all the time on how to create an effective blog and this article gives great guidelines. I put your article on my blog so they could all see it. Thanks for a great resource.
nice article.thank you for mentioning ten elements for keep good blog.
vikram,
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2008/11/ten_elements_every_company_blo.html