Corporate blogging – Things you MUST know now

Blogs are the life blood of many businesses; they let you publish frequently, hunt down customers and greatly increase your SEO.

Though have you ever stopped to think ‘is my blog hurting my brand and destroying the very reason I sought to implement a blog?’ – perhaps someone in your company will write on a topic and under impress? Perhaps they will share an ill considered opinion? Or maybe they will just downright plagiarize someone else’s work leaving you open to accusations of foul play.

These are just a few factors you must consider when launching into corporate blogging or looking to refine your corporate blogging.

So what are some of the common factors that can be detrimental to your corporate blog?

Factual errors and incorrect information

It happens to the best of us. When verifying your facts online, you can easily be mislead and in turn include some stated facts that may actually be untrue. The best way to overcome this is by researching your next blog from multiple sources. Never trust one website for statistics, details or facts – the power of the internet is that you can try and verify the information from numerous sources (albeit try and avoid Wikipedia – use it to get a rough understanding, not become a scholar)

Over technical, under helpful

Sometimes people take their industry, delve into the deep end of it and start to write. Do you really think that a blog about jQuery commands that will help other developers program faster really help a business like Wiliam? We are in the business of making commercial websites, not helping the development community with their programming. There are some minor SEO benefits from these technical articles, though I think you can see what I am saying in reference to attracting customers not fellow industry people.

Try and mix up your writing – a bit of technical analysis is great, just be sure to combine it back to a fact or concept you wish the reader to take in and be interested in.

Ill informed opinion (my fav)

We are all guilty of this one. Sometimes you just need to write a blog as quick as possible and fail to really express a proper opinion, let alone an informed and educated one.

Be cautious of letting staff members post their blogs without editing. What if they have stated a rather serious ill informed opinion? They will not get the blame, your company will.

Technical errors

Technical errors include typos, grammar, broken images, broken links and more. Blogging platforms tend to be quite structured and easy to use, to create technical issues is often quite an effort so there is no excuse.

I am certain this very blog of mine could have some technical errors though you must remember, poor English skills can really reflect badly on your corporate blog. Whatever you do, do not outsource your content production – keep it in house and regulated through a sole entity for editing.

Follow some of these tips on maintaining your corporate blog and you will avoid the ‘egg on face’ moments we all hate.