Your corporate blog probably sucks

In unrelated news, I may work too much.

So your PR agency says you need a corporate blog. Or your kid says so. You tell your web/IT folks to set something up, and then it sits there for a while.

Or you tell your marketing people to create a blog, and it becomes a clearing house of new product updates, sales figures, corporate "news", and news releases.

So, you think, maybe you'll start writing something each week, and you're pretty good about it for the first month or so. Every Wednesday, you compose your thoughts, and publish a mini manifesto about the latest trends in your space. But you can't seem to keep your posts down to a couple paragraphs, and you grow weary of the effort.

Company blogs can be effective ways to share news with your customers and build brand affinity, but they're also powerful vehicles for establishing thought leader status and for learning from honest, open feedback provided by clients and industry experts alike.

The key is to create a process for posting that's as painless as possible, and that maximizes your team's individual expertise while encouraging writers to engage in conversations beyond the confines of your blog.

Here are a few high-level recommendations:

1. Choose a blog platform that's easy to set up and use (yes, I know how vague that is).
2. Establish your blogging team — make sure you recruit writers from different departments and points of view.
3. Make each blogger a subject matter expert, covering a certain concept or aspect of your company's message or expertise (e.g. Jennifer from engineering focuses on back-end systems. Micah from marketing writes about the latest campaigns (both yours and others'). George in design looks at industry aesthetics trends. Ean the CEO sticks to high-level insights about the company and the industry as a whole. You get the idea).
4. Create a bi-weekly content schedule. Six to eight posts in a two-week period, with everyone writing one post. All posts are bylined.
5. Give your blogging team an hour or two each week to dig into related external blogs and forums. Have them create conversations by commenting on those blogs and/or reacting to them in their own posts and linking back. Encourage them to engage in conversation and to build cross-chatter. If they don't already follow certain social media outlets, show them good search tools like Technorati and Tweetscan.
6. Have everyone set up Google alerts and Filtrboxes with key phrases and terms, so that good stuff to comment on hits their inboxes regularly.
7. Support your team with encouragement. Share interesting bits you come across. Make recommendations.
8. Make sure you're sticking to your own regimen. If you're not keeping up and making your posts, how can you expect your team to believe in the process?

Want more detailed information? You know where to find me.