Have corporate blogs evolved over the last few years or are they going backwards? When companies first started blogging there were no standards on the type of content or focus and as a result we saw blogs having content that had nothing to do with what the company was about. In many ways it was the wild west but at the same time it was exciting to see who was willing to get involved in creating conversations. On Profectio we did start to track the many corporate blogs across Canada but decided to put that on hold for two reasons. First, the number of corporate blogs grew so quickly that it become a job just to track which company’s across Canada had a corporate blog. Secondly, the content written on the blogs started to deteriorate and the blogs became a pitch by the author.
Corporate Blogs Should Have Relevant Content
If you are Ford, readers would come to expect content to be about Ford cars or other related automotive content. If you are Dell, then we’d expect your content to be about computers (or some smartphones which is their newest offering). We would not expect to read content about your trip to the dentist and the bad customer service you had, unless your business was related to to customer service or dentistry. Similar to your other communications channels we would not expect that your corporate blog become a place where an employee constantly pushes their new book in the readers face or to constantly talk about how good the company’s product or service in an abstract way without some way to back it up (think case study).
If You’ve Never Had A Corporate Newsletter, Can You Have A Successful Blog
Blogs are a communications channel, and require a dedicated person to be able to contribute content to them. Just like how the Big Mac that you can buy in Vancouver will taste the same as the one you buy in China there needs to be some consistency in you the product (or blog post) that is offered. Many corporations are still wondering if they should launch a corporate blog but if they haven’t been able to consistently in another communications channel then there is a low chance that they will be consistent with blog posts.
Corporate Blog Need To Be More Than A Pitch Or Shill
I don’t know about you but I’m very bored of the number of corporations who use their blog simply to pitch something that isn’t relevant to the company. There has to be a better way to get your message out then to ask people to buy your book in every other blog post, right? Part of the opportunity that you have is to be a brand champion for your company, this can’t be done if you are constantly including self-serving pitches.
Maybe it is time that someone publishes some type of code of conduct or guideline on what makes a successful corporate blog. What do you think?
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