The Blogging Blog

So what do I want to blog about? What could be better than – blogging. The number of people blogging has fallen off significantly in recent years and there’s one reason. Because blogging is not a good tool? NO, because successful blogging is hard! Anyone can hold forth on their ideas on a blank page, but to get others to care to read that page is another matter. A lot of people who just wanted to get something off their chest have fallen away, but the number of serious, interesting and dedicated blogs is growing. There’s a million things to learn about good blogging, but recently we posted on Facebook (strategiesadpr) an interesting blog post by Blog Tyrant entitled “Three Problems that Make Me Leave Your Blog in Three Seconds.” Here’s some of what he said in a nutshell:

1. People leave your blog if they see that no one is commenting. He advises changing the default text from “0 comments” to something less pejorative like “comments enjoyed”. Encourage comments by asking questions. And (very cool idea) start a “buddy” group of fellow bloggers who leave comments on your blog in exchange for you leaving comments on theirs.
2. Don’t mutilate your blog theme or make it hard to navigate. Get a custom theme designed, get a logo designed at least, choose a simple, mostly white theme, and don’t edit it yourself unless you make it perfect. Make sure your theme enhances your blog brand.
3. The most serious problem according to Blog Tyrant is no original ideas. He says when a blog has nothing new to offer people know it in a second. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just present your ideas in a new, fresh way. Find an angle on your topic. When Strategies does a corporate blog it’s great because we have people to call on who are experts in their field so their advice is original. Brand yourself in a way that supports your unique angle. Our client Emerson Rosemount Analytical doesn’t call its blog Rosemount or Emerson. It’s called Analytic Expert, which reinforces their brand. The Blog Tyrant also says to not only find out what your blogging competitors are doing, also find out what they’re NOT doing and do that.

This is a good place to start. To read the entire post click here. There’s much more to learn about driving traffic to your blog, but we’ll talk about that in a future post.The thing that often stops companies from blogging is the fact that no one on the staff has the time and energy to handle the blog. And yet blogs need to be personal. At Strategies, we help create corporate blogs, getting input from individual staff members on their area of expertise, and crafting posts in their voice. Each post is personal, but the responsibility doesn’t fall on a single staffer. It’s a great strategy and can turn social media skeptics into enthusiastic bloggers.