A guest post from Barbara Jolie on keeping your corporate blog fresh and interesting.
Corporate blogs can get a little stagnant, but not if you approach them from a fresh angle from time to time. In writing this, I realize that corporate communications professionals are often given a very limited scope from which to write. Some corporate bloggers are given specific instructions and must generate routine, cut-and-dry content on subject matter that is completely out of their control. If you don’t have the freedom to change the types of information you are locked into, disregard this post. But if you have a bit more latitude for creativity than the average corporate blogger, or you are tasked with livening up a blog that currently gets very little traffic, try coming at your routine blog postings from a fresh perspective.
Now, even corporate bloggers who are given a bit of latitude will need to run many of these ideas past their superiors, but I think they are definitely worth suggesting. One of the first things you can do is begin writing in a first-person, conversational tone. From the start, blogs that connect with a large audience have been personal. While it may not be appropriate for you to use “I” language, you can certainly begin using “we” language. For example, instead of saying, “John Doe Financial is now offering this or that new service,” you can change the language to first person and say “We are proud to offer our customers a new service that will allow them to do such and such.”
Another idea is to write on industry-related hot topics in a journalistic style. Let’s stick with the financial services firm I used as an example and say that recent bad news stories on the state of the economy are getting investors nervous. You could interview some of the seasoned financial advisors at your firm on the top investor concerns, gather quotes, and craft a series of posts on investing through tough economic times. Not only does this help get new professional company voices into the corporate blog other than your own, but taking a professional stance on hot topics in the media that relate to your industry is also a great way to connect with your current blog followers and gather more followers.
In the same vein, you can solicit blog posts from professionals in your company or merely collaborate with them on brief, industry-related how-to posts. For a financial services firm, topics about personal finance and saving money would be relevant. Interspersing these types of short, bite-sized posts in with longer, company-specific posts provides more variety to readers of a corporate blog.
If your corporate blog does not allow visitor comments, lobby your supervisors to enable them. While you will undoubtedly become a moderator for such comments, which can be a royal pain, there is no better way to engage readers than by giving them a voice as well. Failing this, at least lobby to post an e-mail address on the corporate blog home page where readers can communicate their thoughts directly to the corporate communications team and let you in on the topics they would like to see addressed in the blog.
Finally, when drafting a blog post, ask one final question before publishing it to keep your corporate blog from becoming so laden with marketing-speak that it is of little value to readers. After answering the who, what, where, when and why in the post, be sure to answer the question who cares? Find an angle in your blog post that points out how the information contained in the post is relevant to customers and/or investors.
This guest post is contributed by Barbara Jolie, who writes on the topics of online classes. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
