Corporate Blogging

I just read a post at Building43, a site dedicated to small business on the web titled Top Five Reasons No One Reads Your Company Blog. The net net of this was as follows.

1.  Hiring an intern write your blog instead of the person in your company who knows the most about your product
2. Taking before listening and participating  in other forums & commenting on blogs
3. Talking to yourself. Meaning coming up with content that you’ve got no references for
4. Not being timely. Pretty self explanatory
5. Hiding your blog. Making it difficult to find on your site

I certainly agree with all of these ideas fully, especially 2, 3 and 5.

Of course there are other reasons folks don’t read blogs

1. Bad writing and formatting. The fact is that people still don’t read web sites, they prefer video and pictures
2. Run on text with too much content. Using bold headlines and bullets make it easier for your readers to scan
3. Not updating on a regular basis. Customers want new, useful information.
4. Writing only about your product rather than the challenges your customers face that either yours or a complimentary product might solve.
5. Using too much industry jargon leaving the potential new customer feeling left out of club

There are tons of corporate blogging resources out there.

But the most important factor for corporate blogging is to go get started.