Is it better for a corporation to have a lame blog, or not to have a blog at all?
It’s a reasonable question. What percentage of corporate blogs out there today are not lame (“lame” being the presence of the following)?:
- Lack of frequency of postings — The company made two posts in the first week when the enthusiasm about the new blog was at an all-time high. They’ve now made zero posts over the last three months. As the tumbleweeds blow by the occasional reader, they can’t help but wonder if the company is still in business.
- Self-aggrandizing infomercials — Every posting is a breathless account of how visionary the company is, or how revolutionary the product is. The self-congratulation quickly becomes nauseating for the reader.
- Awful writing / flat-out boring subject matter — Whoever is actually penning the thing (probably an in-house marketing person) consistently sounds disingenuous / three steps removed from the issues they’re discussing. The web analytics tool shows that 99.99% of blog visitors each month are new visitors (because no one who’s suffered through one posting has ever returned for more).
- Lots of high-fiving about “momentum” — Every other posting is about how awesome a new partner or customer is. The b.s. meter is so continuously off the charts that the reader can no longer decipher between truly interesting “news” and the ongoing din of the cheerleading.
- Nobody reads it — It’s one of the least-visited links on the site. Every single posting has zero comments.
The last point warrants further discussion. Name three corporate blogs that you regularly read? Honestly. I present that question to folks all the time. Typically the single corporate blog that they can actually identify is Jonathan Schwartz’s (Sun Microsystems CEO) blog.
And certainly Schwartz’s blog defies all of the pitfalls of lame corporate blogs. The frequency of postings is good. It’s well-read. Postings generally draw quite a few comments. It’s often linked to / referred to by industry watchers. It’s clearly become an important vehicle in the Sun PR arsenal.
But one thing that many corporations (seeking to kick off a similar CEO-written blog) fail to realize is just how persistently Schwartz’s blog was publicized by Sun PR folks over time. Marketeers often suffer delusions that an earnestly-written blog by its own merits will quickly accumulate a critical mass of readers through some sort of viral snowballing. That’s irrational exuberance. I would argue that the publicity efforts (via Sun’s PR team) that went behind making the Schwartz blog well known known accounted for the overwhelming amount of traffic that went to it (as opposed to the intrinsic value of the postings).
So it’s not just a matter of writing blogs. It’s also a matter of how you drive readers to it (whether via publicity, direct marketing, or other vehicles). Kick off a corporate blog and post a link to it your web site (without any further ado) and prepare to be severely underwhelmed by the visitation and feedback.
Now there are tons of PR firms and marketing service firms out there that will be quick to cry blasphemy. Of course … they have a vested interest in promoting the idea that blogs induce some amazing viral marketing effects. Sure — there are examples where this has happened. But take a look at the real value that the majority of corporate blogs are yielding.
For all blasphemy accusers, please include pointers to the corporate blogs that you think are well put together and well-read …
(image by robinhamman on flickr creative commons)
