Industry Digital Insights

A corporate blog is primarily a communication tool and not a marketing tool. It should be used to communicate in an informal way the thoughts, opinions and views of individuals within an organisation. The ultimate aim of this communication is to open up a channel for conversation, a route to engage directly with your audience and to position your organisation as thought leaders in their particular field.

Through the posts and over time you want to develop a relationship with the audience so they can begin to understand your personality, your values and your goals. This is something that is at the root of the corporate blog, the personality needs to come through otherwise it simply becomes a corporate communication that becomes soulless. Then, through the timeliness and the relevance of the posts the corporate blog becomes something that the audience wants to engage with on a regular basis.

The corporate blog will allow your industry to get as close to your target audience as you want to get. It facilitates your audience’s ability to get close and engage with your brand and your industry. And, once they engage your business establishes a voice and through that you create thought leadership in the industry.

One of the main reasons some companies choose not to blog is because they are so afraid of being critisied. What companies need to realise is that like it or not there is a conversation going on about your product or brand somewhere out there. The key is to track it and be part of this conversation and not just stick your head in the sand hoping it will go away.

There are various ways in which to keep track of these conversations, they don’t take up lots of resource and, most appealing of all, they are all freely available on the web. I will be talking about these tools in a later post.

There was a recent report published by Forrester called ‘People dont trust company blogs’ that stated that only 16% of customers trust corporate blogs and that most corporate blogs are either not credible or the content is staid and not that interesting.

To this end, corporate blogs should not be about a rehash of press releases written with a more human tone of voice, they should reflect what is actually going on in the market place and not focus solely on selling the latest company product. The person blogging within a company should be aware of their audience and they should understand that this is a conversation and not a platform for their own ego. A successful corporate blog should build trust and credibility and, over time, become a strong thought leader in the industry.

To become a successful thought leader your corporate blog should be offering a certain amount of insight into your industry, the processes that are used and the company’s thoughts on future innovations. The blog should talk about issues that are current and relevant to your customers and help solve their problems.

The big contradiction regarding the corporate blog is that while the style and content of it should be relaxed and informal the actual workings of the blog are driven by formality and structure. Without this the blog will wither and die as posts drift off the point or worse still, are not written at all. Just see the negative press surrounding Charles Dunstone and the Carphone Warehouse blog for a lesson on what not to do.

A content strategy is the most important part of the corporate blog. It is derived from clear knowledge of the purpose and the objective of the blog and everything you post should aim to support this. Another important part of the content strategy is derived from having an intimate knowledge of the needs of your audience. The content you post has to be aligned to the needs of your audience while balancing the need of your defined business objective.

The content strategy then needs to be structured and worked on from a practical point of view. What mix of people do you have signed up to write content? Do they know when they are expected to produce the content? Do they know the business objectives and the targeted audience? Have they been briefed on, and do they understand the tone of voice that needs to be used? And while you should never use a ghost writer, using a blogging editor to tidy up posts is not frowned upon at all.

The most efficient way to create your content strategy is through a formal spreadsheet that has ownership within a particular team. This document should define specific authors, content topics, significant dates in the diary for both the company and the industry and all known media launch dates. Defining all of these elements upfront will allow you to publish timely and relevant posts that are aligned to your audience need and will meet your objectives.

More in-depth content strategies should also take advantage of online monitoring tools that are available to help you track what is being said about your industry and your company online. With this visibility of these external conversations you can then make an informed call as to whether you need to post a response on your blog.

However you proceed you must always make sure you devise a content strategy first that has been derived from a clear objective before you charge straight into the tactical implementation. Do the latter and your blog will end up aimless and unloved in no time.