6 Approaches to Your Company Blog

Written by Dana Oshiro / February 9, 2010 8:14 PM / 9 Comments

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

In the last few months several startups have asked me how to approach corporate blogging. Judging by the frequency of requests, Gartner was right in suggesting that corporate blogging is rising up the "slope of enlightenment" and about 2 years away from widespread mainstream adoption. The road to enlightenment has been a long one. In the past ten years we've learned that company blogs should not be press releases, sales pitches or plagiarized quotes from Dale Carnegie. You reach enlightenment when you learn to respect your readers. If you want someone to bookmark or retweet your posts, then give them a useful resource. Below are a few approaches you can take to increase the dialogue and comments on your blog.

1. The Operations Blog: Many company blogs focus on the internal workings of the startup and how teams have managed to increase efficiencies. For example, marketing teams have dissected their efforts, COO's have talked about their transition to cloud services and HR teams write about their employee wellness plans. Sometimes your story along with links to useful vendors is a great resource for others.

2. The Veteran / Inspirational Blog: This type of post is best suited to the second time entrepreneur, agency founder or well-established investor. It often offers stories about the climb to a position of power as well as some of the lessons learned along the way. If you're attempting this approach you should already be in a position of mentorship for others. You want people linking to your article in the hopes that they're revisiting it as a point of inspiration.

3. The Prediction Blog: Both the iPad and Google Buzz have been huge news stories in the last few days. Your little corporate blog isn't likely to outshine the stories from major tech blogs and media outlets, but you can provide some relevant predictions for your specific industry. For example, if you're a consumer facing web startup with a real estate focus, you could highlight the use cases for Buzz and its geo-locational features.

4. The Research Blog: If your company deals with large amounts of anonymized data or your startup specializes in analysis or monitoring, then the research blog is a good way to aggregate your findings and pinpoint trends. The best way to write this post is to summarize key findings and make suggestions on how others might adapt. If you're not confident in your recommendations then you can ask for quotes from industry veterans. This method is often used by analysts and real-time monitoring startups.

5. The Community / Advocate Blog: This type of blog only really works if you have a large number of stakeholders who need your support and direction. Planet Mozilla is a great example of a resource that focuses on internal events; nevertheless, these internal events help thousands of open source developers contribute to Mozilla projects. If you've got lots of 3rd party developers, designers or contributors, this may be a good option for you.

6. The Coolhunter Blog: This blog is perhaps the toughest one to pull off because not only do you have to be confident in your ability to spot emerging trends, but you also have to make sure that the trends are relevant to your community. On-demand manufacturing site Ponoko does a great job of showcasing design while inspiring community members to build their own pieces.

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Comments

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Good information. Nice tips to follow.

Posted by: Aditya Bakshi | February 9, 2010 8:43 PM

That is a nice way to categorize, it fits in all the types I could think of. Companies should definitely look at blogs seriously. They help extend reach, grow awareness for your product or service and display your understanding and knowledge.

Posted by: Jane Cooke | February 10, 2010 12:49 AM

I like your categorization Dana.

It highlights an important segmentation requirement and a problem that I've encountered recently being the co-founder (and primary writer) of a new start-up.

Specifically, how do you cover the multiple topics that your audience seeks and that the different disciplines of your company desire to produce - without diluting or alienating a specific target.

We are constantly thinking in multiple streams:

- opinion pieces based on the industry we're in
- new insights/trends
- transparent communication of company operations: the experiences of a growing start-up (business, creative, technical)

Given the need to create content in many directions for many different levels of readership - what's the best approach? Separate blog channels?

It's a good IA/content challenge, and I'd be interested to know what others have done to tackle this problem.

Posted by: Oli Gardner | February 10, 2010 2:25 AM

We manged to get about 320 subscribers to our blog by addressing marketing & sales issues mainly related to the Internet like this one: http://bit.ly/crI2VK
Slow growth.

The problems we encounter:
- even once the blog posts have been indexed, Google seems to forget older blog posts.
- some aggregation websites score higher than the original blog post on Google and Bing
- less people bookmark blog posts on StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Propellor than 15-20months ago. People have less time ?
- Posting everyday is overkill as most people hardly can keep up. Hence we lowered to post every other day.

Posted by: LEADSExplorer | February 10, 2010 3:18 AM

Interesting post. A good follow-up might address questions such as the following.
When you want to do more than one of these things, is it best to have a blog of each type? Or to use categories or tags within *the* corporate blog?
I incline toward the multiple blog approach, so that individual voices and enthusiasms can shine through and are easily subscribed to.

Posted by: changingway.org | February 10, 2010 5:38 AM

Fascinating that corporations are about two years from widespread acceptance of blogging - I wonder how long before social media is accepted? It would also be interesting to see how these trends compare to small business in general.

I also liked your quote of "You reach enlightenment when you learn to respect your readers." I hadn't heard this before but it makes perfect sense and is the mark of a quality blog.

Posted by: John R. Sedivy | February 10, 2010 5:40 AM

Hey folks, I think separate channels or categories are fine, or you could always highlight each contributor by having them each choose their own topic area / beat and define that in their bio paragraph.

Posted by: Dana Oshiro | February 10, 2010 8:10 AM

Great post!
What about one more category of blogs, with information that is helpful, informative, and interesting (like this one)?
Since our clients at jaxseoworks.com are mostly local, small businesses, we encourage their blogs to be in this category.
But I can easily see for larger companies, the other categories you list could also apply.
Thank you for sharing!

Posted by: Ken | February 12, 2010 7:00 AM

The categories you've listed here are very helpful, especially from a PR & Marketing standpoint. Knowing the type of blog one is writing will only increase its chances of being targeted, memorable, spreadable & niche. I think too often new corporate blogs make the mistake of not determining what kind of blog they should aspire to create. I believe you've given us all a place to start in categorizing the "types" to mold that discussion.

I will say that Corporate blogs can maybe be an amalgamation of 2 or 3 of these blogs, especially if they are first in their industry to start. They could be a prediction blog, cool hunter, and community advocate. I think this is the advantage of being first-to-market.

Thanks for your post! I will undoubtedly reference it in the near future.

Posted by: taloolah | February 12, 2010 8:00 PM