blog

It’s natural to want to entertain or inform your readers with the best content you can put together. Rather than push a product, the conventional wisdom holds, you want to engage, interact and make the world a better place for your clients.

And you do. You really do want these things. The only problem, of course, is that such lofty ideals aren’t free, and you’re the one stuck with the tab. So, you need to generate some revenue, and your corporate blog is one of the ways you do that.

To get the most out of your blog, however, you need to find that middle ground between pure advertising and pure news/information/education. Essentially, you need blog content that can unobtrusively deliver an engagement opportunity while still delivering value to your target market.

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Blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to expect readers to engage on some sort of level if you’re doing it right. With that said, some blogs can be the Wild Wild West, which is what gives blogging a bad reputation in the board room and with executives that are stuck in the 80s. So, despite impassioned pleas to get a corporate blog off the ground, sometimes those pleas are destined to fall on deaf ears.

However, no mountain is too high to climb. To reach the corporate summit and gain approval (and maybe even budget), you need to know how to sell the corporate blogging concept to a guy in a tie who thinks the internet is dangerous.

Fortunately, it isn’t as difficult as it may seem.

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It’s relatively easy for companies on the Fortune 500 to get material for their blogs. These large enterprises have access to beefy research departments, paid primary research and other tools that smaller companies simply can’t afford. But, this doesn’t mean you’re stuck writing “soft” blog posts that lack the punch of big stats and pretty charts.

To integrate data-driven blog posts into your editorial calendar, all you have to do is use the news. By working with the research of the major players and media outlets in your industry, you can add more texture to your blog without having to invest heavily.

Here are six ways to turn the public domain into your free “research department”:

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The purpose of a corporate blog or other social media presence isn’t merely to add to the endless electrons that are produced every day. And, it isn’t merely to provide a free service to the world. You’re looking to advance your business. While this may entail providing a free service consisting of informative and useful content, the net result has to be a lead stream for you to exploit. To turn your social media communities and traffic into business opportunities, you need hooks.

It’s easy to go overboard. In pursuit of leads, many companies tend to use their social media environments as advertisements, promoting at the expense of informing. Do this, and you run this risk of losing your audience — as well as your investment in the social media marketing initiative. When you create content and interact with your community, play it straight: deliver information that your readers can use — but don’t be afraid to make it easy for them to enter the sales cycle. This is where your “hooks” become useful.

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Does having a Facebook fan page, a LinkedIn group and a blog mean you have to content — regularly — for three different platforms? It’s a scary thought, probably enough to turn even the most zealous social media advocate away from the space. Well, here’s the good news: write content correctly, and you can carve it up for use across your entire integrated social media environment. There is no bad news.

Start with the blog post — it’s going to be your anchor. The material you publish on your blog will tend to be longer and more complex than what you put on Facebook, LinkedIn or certainly Twitter. Everything else you write and post should be pulled from this source. Not only do you only write once, with the exception of small modifications, but you ensure consistency across your entire social media environment.

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Technorati editor Don Martelli and I went back and forth recently about whether it makes sense for corporate blogs to leave the comments feature enabled. I’m among the few who believe that comments add little value (at best) on a B2B corporate blog. It’s counter-intuitive and likely to get me beheaded by an angry mob of social media gurus. But, if you think through the dynamic, you’ll start to see how it can make sense.

When I brought up the concept, Martelli noted, “I don’t think this is commonly practiced.” It’s true. I haven’t seen many blogs with commenting locked, though I have seen plenty of corporate and brand blogs that just have no comments posted. He added, “In those cases where comments are off, the blog is more of a news feed than an actual engagement tool.” Again, he’s right, but I suspect traditional views of social media (if there can be such a thing so early in the game) are clouding the ultimate objective: to connect with your market and get them to enter your sales cycle.

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When Mark Hermann, an excellent corporate blogger, bid farewell to his blog, he pulled back the curtain. Among the frank observations he made, one in particular stuck with me: you’ll run out of topics faster than you think. I’ve been there, and it’s awful.

You get started thinking about how much there is to say about your company and your industry, and soon enough, you’re flipping through trade magazines for inspiration. Well, it isn’t always that bad, but the reality is that you’ll soon find yourself struggling to find an insight to provide. Why is that? With rich marketplaces and unique developments in every market around the world, you’d think there’s no shortage of fodder.

Stop thinking about potential for a moment, and turn yourself over to the cold clutches of reality. Most of what you’re thinking you’d never put on a corporate blog.

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Getting started is the hardest part. I remember when I launched my first corporate blog. I had a backlog of posts and had worked late nights and weekends for six months. Readership was almost nothing. I knew this would happen, but it didn’t make me any happier. It’s easy to throw in the towel during the first few months, but that means giving up all the return for the work you’ve already expended. Stick with it!

The first 90 days are all about survival. To help you get through them, here are five tips that I learned the hard way.

1. Be realistic
You’re not going to fill up the internet the first day. You won’t even fill up your blog. Start with measurable, attainable goals — the first being to get your blog up and running. Then, work on building a backlog of stories (this will get you some much-needed breathing room later). Once you get comfortable with your corporate blog and have worked it into your other responsibilities, set more aggressive targets.

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When you’re launching a business-to-business (B2B) corporate blog, the worst thing you can do is look to the likes of TechCrunch, Mashable and Technorati for a starting point. The mass media blogs that are so popular — and which may have inspired your own initiative — are fundamentally different from what you’re about to kick off. Don’t get me wrong: I read mass media blogs regularly (and even write for a few), but the dynamics are wholly unlike what you’ll encounter with a corporate blog. If you have visions of turning your corporate blog into the next Gawker-sans-edge, take a look at the four tips below.

1. Volume, volume, volume
When you have a dozen writers each contributing at least one post a day, well, you’ll have a lot of content. When you have one writer who’s also toiling away at other marketing tasks, you won’t. Committing to a blog post every day is a challenge for a business, especially if your blogger wears other hats.

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I’ve ghost written for a number of executives and companies, and the issue of voice always comes up – especially for corporate blogs.

I read a great article by Mark Herrmann (PDF) a few days ago about this (via WSJ). Before he took his current job, as chief litigation counsel Aon, he ran an excellent legal blog, Drug and Device Law Blog, in conjunction with his law practice.

Herrmann emphasized the importance of developing a voice. Focusing on voice over content, however, is among the greatest barrier to progress you can face when trying to get a corporate blog off the ground. Instead, you should focus on information.

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