BLOGthenticity

So, we’re wondering what circumstances are right for a blog at your company/organization. Well, I asked my students to consider this and I’ll be posting their ideas in a few different posts along the way.

Our first contestants are Melanie Sollid, Jami Bebee, Elizabeth Wood Rodgers and Cheryl Hawley. All of these ladies are blogging in the Auburn PR Blog for my Foundations of Public Relations class, too. You may read more of their thoughts - on a variety of topics - over there.

Now, to their questions. You tell me. Are they on the right track? Have they ((ahem)) learned (or borrowed?) from other sites? Have you thought about these for your company’s blog?

Please read on for the details …

Melanie Sollid writes, “So. In my humble opinion, these five questions are the ones that any blog should consider before they start posting…”

1. Is your information new or interesting? More specifically, do you have a new product to offer or an event to discuss? Do you have a fresh opinion on a topic? (Sometimes favorite subjects, *cough* Armstrong Williams, have been discussed to death, so unless you have a fresh approach they are best to avoid.)

2. Do you have a sense of humor, or at least a conversational style? It’s crucial to oberve the rules of grammar while blogging to maintain credibility, but if your posts aren’t fun or interesting to read, people will skip right over them.

3. Does you blog have personality? This is somewhat closely related to having a sense of humor, but not quite… I think that when you can get a feel for what people are like when you read their blogs, you connect with them on another level than just recieving information. For example, if you find that another blogger loves to bike even if that’s not what their blog is about you will be more inclined to read it if you share the interest.

4. Does your blog have a focus? Obviously small business and special interest blogs have a focus. And it would be easy to assume that all blogs do. But I disagree… a lot of the general PR blogs I have read feel too general and vague to me. Blogs can discuss an entire field, but they are a lot more interesting if they have a specific focus that they post about quite often. For example, PR blogs that deal a lot with technology or transparency in the media…

And finally-

5. Could anyone read your blog? Even if your blog is geared to a specific field of experts, when a blogger gets too heavy on the technical jargon too often, he or she is bound to lose readers. This is especially true in the case of blogs who have a somewhat technical focus, but are meant for public consumption. For example, the tinbasher’s blog… even though the focus of the blog is bending and welding metal (yawn), anyone can read the posts because they have a personal feel and they show the finished products of metal bending– which the general public can relate to better than a work in progress.

Next, Jami Bebee (our resident marathon runner, by the way) offers up these considerations:

1. The most basic question would obviously be, do you have trust and confidence in your product or company? If you have any negativity toward your own organizational structure or its products, blogging is most likely a bad idea. Transparency might not always be beneficial.

2. What would be the benefits to a company blog? Also, what would be the downside of a blog? I would definitely weigh these against each other.

3. The company should look at blogging statistics and measure them against their target audience. Do the external or internal factors make a bigger difference?

4. How much would blogging influence your advertising budget? This could possibly be the answer to various company’s prayers. It is free advertising and publicity.

5. Do you have the time and energy to monitor or have your company’s blog monitored? Is the blog a priority? In order for the blog to be successful it has to be credible.

Next up, Elizabeth Wood Rodgers writes, “Here are my five questions a company should think about before blogging:”

1. What is the specific purpose for this blog? What do we as a company want to accomplish with this specific information and how do we want to handle it?

2. What type of people do we want for this blog? What type of personality are we sending out and looking for?

3. What do we want to achieve with this blog? What exactly are we expecting people to gain from our blog?

4. Do you know what kind of information we want to discuss about on this blog? What are we talking and agreeing/disagreeing about?

5. Is our information we are putting out there interesting to other viewers? How can we succeed with this blog and develop interest in our responders?

Creating a new blog is fun and exciting and that is one thing people need to have to gain credibility and to receive the public’s response.

And, last - but not least - Cheryl Hawley offers her “5 Questions that should be asked to see if a blog is right for your company.”

1. Who is the blog for mainly? Company workers or Consumers or both?

2. Is our audience computer savvy? A company blog must be accessible to your audience and those who may benefit from it.

3. How often will the blog be updated? For a blog to be useful it must contain accurate and up to date information.

4. Is there an audience for the particular information your company has to offer? You company’s blog can offer spectacular information but it is useless if no one is interested in reading it.

5. Who will enforce the blog guidelines and make sure information is accurate? Someone must be appointed as a moderator of some sort if you want your blog to stay clean and purposeful.

I like them. Taken altogether, this is a good list of considerations from a group that just picked up blogging about 4 weeks ago. Thank you, ladies.

Filed under: Business Blogging, How to Blog, Robert, Why Blog?