I saw that an old friend from High School (haven’t seen him since then, wow) was promoting his new corporate blog. The blog looked great but I thought I would share my thoughts as someone that has maybe a 6 month head start. Below is the email I sent to him giving some of my basic thoughts and a couple great links I keep in mind. Figured it may help out some others.

Hi Jason,

Glad you responded. I am actually working on my company’s blog as well and making sure that it s fresh and applicable. A couple of my own few tips:

• Know your audience or potential audience and cater to them specifically. Don’t be afraid to polarize
• Make sure that the content you write about is conversational. It should not read like another corporate site. It is an opportunity for you to be candid with your customers. (this was the biggest thing that I took away from my first look at your blog, basically corp content in a new medium.)
• Keep it clean – by clean I mean not too much stuff going on around the content. (I use wordpress as well and there is a lot of temptation to keep adding plug-ins because they’re so damn cool. I have gone overboard a couple times, I can’t help it. Then I try to scale back with the essentials)
• Write about your thoughts and take towards the item or industry. Blog is short for web log, like a journal. Interested parties can get the facts on your corporate site.
• The blog should spark dialogue. Write pieces that leave the readers wanting to answer another question and that’s when you get the really warm leads.
• Be patient, it won’t happen overnight. I am still waiting to find the right people I should be talking to
• Find 3 to 5 great blogs that you follow and emulate them. (I use google reader to consolidate my articles that I read, my favorites include dumblittleman, zen habits, seth godin, Guy Kawasaki) . there is a blog for everything out there these days
• That’s all I got off the top of my head

The following resources are just good articles on writing and producing blogs.

http://danblank.com/blog/2009/01/16/how-to-create-a-high-quality-blog/

http://writetodone.com/2008/11/06/branding-101-how-to-promote-your-blog-like-the-big-guys-do/

also look into twitter:

http://www.twitterbusinessbook.com/2009/01/17-reasons-your-business-should-be-on-twitter/

Hope this stuff helps. All the best.

Greg

If anyone else can offer some help feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to pass you along to Jason.

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