So, you’ve got a business blog. Who cares?

Start a company blog, great idea. Gets the word out about your company and establishes you as an expert. Or does it? Peter Bray looks across the windswept plains of poorly planned corporate blogging. Cue tumbleweed. 

I see a lot of businesses undertake what I call vanity projects on the web. I know the principle of advertising can be thought of as ‘sell them the dream, give them the truth’, but there is far too much meaningless rubbish on company websites.

There’s McDonalds’ Vice President, Bob Langert, who writes a blog on corporate social responsibility that is pure PR (csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com). Or The Guardian website (www.guardian.co.uk) which, despite the publication’s long and respected history is, quite frankly, poorly written drivel. 

Many corporate websites post pointless talking-head videos of their CEOs, ‘About Us’ sections that fail to tell you anything, or overblown and unsupported case studies. The prime suspect in this gang of web blunderers is more often than not the company blog. I have a message for Mr or Ms CEO: most of your potential clients have no interest at all in your opinions.

Here is the usual life cycle of the company blog. An agency decides it can capitalise on the Web2.0 trend by selling an element of Web2.0, such as blogging, to a client. 

Once the marketing manager has been convinced a blog will give the brand further innovative positioning, someone has to be found in the company to write it. They realise the risks inherent in a blog, so figure the only way to cover their butts is to have the big boss write it. The big boss thinks it’s a great idea and churns out a couple of blog entries in the first week, typically mixing a few snippets of personal interest with corporate gloss. The blog then generates a few comments, typically from That Guy in the IT Department who No One Talks To. 

The following week the boss is a bit busier, so fewer entries get written. The week after, fewer still entries get written. Within a month, the blog is lucky to be getting any new entries at all.

Sound familiar? Ever been to a blog that hasn’t been updated for a while? Nothing looks worse. Well, apart from a chat room where you have to talk to yourself. If you are seriously considering creating a company blog, I have just two words for you: please don’t.

There are literally millions of blogs, but try naming 10 good corporate ones. The old joke about this is that the bloggers outnumber the people that read them. 

The reality is that people don’t care as much about our opinions as we think they do. Too often, business owners believe that in order to sell products or services, they should be positioned as central to a consumer’s lifestyle. Wrong!

We don’t need to establish a bond between consumers and our products and services, we simply need to give them the information they want to make their own purchasing decisions. Just because (from our corporate perspective) we think something is important doesn’t mean that our customers actually want this information.

The great thing about Web2.0 is that it gives consumers the ability to interpret and mash up brands to suit their own agenda. Never before have business owners had such little control over how they are perceived.

This is a superb opportunity. Create the tools for your users to communicate what they want, and your brand awareness will increase. Let them make up their own minds as to the merits of what you offer. 

Speak simply, listen intently and loyalty, sales and customer satisfaction will increase. And without a blogging CEO in sight.