With as many right things you can do with a blog to make it successful, there are nearly as many things you can do wrong. Below are 3 common mistakes companies make with corporate blogs, why they make them and what you can do to avoid them.
Mistake Number One: Not Setting Goals
Many business blogs are started without specific goals. Blog software is typically so easy to install and setup that the number of new blogs has been overwhelming, making it difficult for any one blog to stand out.
Identifying the purpose of the blog is as important as researching similar blogs and the communities they are involved with. The networks of users associated with blogs similar in purpose and content to your own should match the blog’s target audience.
Mistake Number Two: Not Keeping Control
Since many companies start blogs as an experiment, they often are not taken as seriously. As a result, third party blog hosting platform and url are often used such as companyname.blogspot.com, companyname.wordpress.com or companyname.typepad.com.
Why shouldn’t you host your blog using a third party domain name? First, you have no control. If you want to change blogging platforms, there is typically no reasonable way to redirect traffic from the old blog to the new address in a search engine friendly way.
Mistake Number Three: Not Sourcing Content
The excitement and promise from starting a corporate blog can often become a case of overenthusiasm when it comes to writing content. Most people are hard pressed to write good emails, let alone 400 word blog posts. Writing original content every day or at least a few times a week can become near impossible if plans are not made editorially and for sourcing content within the organization.
Obviously there are many more mistakes companies make with corporate blogs ranging from not optimizing blog templates and posts to inconsistent posting to a lack of metrics. We’ll save those for another “Business Blog Mistakes” post version 2.0. Companies that want to avoid making business blogging mistakes can hire a blog consultant like the folks at TopRank or any of the contributors listed in the left side bar of Business Blog Consulting.
Nice tips from your posts. In fact I should know about such mistakes beforehand. Need to take care for blogging.
I am starting to blog at http://www.javra.com/blog
Comment by abeen — July 10, 2008 @ 5:59 am
[…] good post by Lee Odden covers three common mistakes companies make with their blogs, why they make them, and how to avoid […]
Pingback by The Science of Marketing » Blog Archive » Business Blogging: The Blogosphere is Buzzing — July 10, 2008 @ 9:08 am
I’m STUNNED at the number of large corporations who have considerable resources and yet are in direct violation of the “Control Your Blog” commandment. Nice post!
Comment by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd — July 14, 2008 @ 11:40 am
[…] the question of why you shouldn’t host your blog using a third party domain name in his post Learning from Business Blogging Mistakes. First, you have no control. If you want to change blogging platforms, there is typically no […]
Pingback by 1st Commandment of Blogging | EZ Marketing Tool — July 14, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Really good points, Lee.
When we launched our blog (www.inmedialog.com) about 10 months ago, it had a clearly articulated editorial strategy (a legacy of my previous experience launching a variety of print publications) and clear evaluative criteria against which we could measure our success, including, eventually, ROI.
We’ve adhered to all three of your central lessons, and a few more of our own. We recently passed post #250, and reported to our readers on how we are doing so far.
Comment by Francis Moran — July 15, 2008 @ 10:24 am
Here are some additions from me:
Mistake 4: Getting paid for promoting other’s sites and products. It is a good idea to earn by writing reviews of others’ products and sites in your blog (you can earn anything between $10 – $150 per review depending on your PR and Alexa rank), but if your general post vs sponsored post ratio becomes more than 1: 3, then you face the risk of getting penalized by Google.
Mistake 5: Irregular posting. It happens with most bloggers, but is a terrible mistake. There should be a regularity, or you risk losing your loyal readers. I came across a site called http://www.writer4me.com and hired professional bloggers to maintain some of my blogs. They were good, For $199/month, they wrote one blog post daily. Good option if you are too busy to maintain your blog regularly.
Mistake 6: Choosing free blogging platforms like WordPress.com. It is true that making a free blog (as a subdomain) is hassle free and takes a minute to start, but you do not have the freedom of posting links in such blogs and may be banned by WordPress for posting links.
Comment by Peter — July 17, 2008 @ 1:10 am
Business Blog Consulting: Everything about Corporate Blogs and Business Blogging….
A resource for companies interested in creating a business weblog. Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lot…
Trackback by pligg.com — July 22, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
I agree with not hosting your blog on third party hosts. That never worked out well for us, but we now have all of our blogs on the actual site URL and it is much more integral to the overall experience.
Comment by cleaning Business Guru — November 13, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
Love this article. We will be starting a business blog ourselves and this is quite helpful.
Comment by Ed- Cleaners' Hub — September 14, 2010 @ 12:30 pm