Corporate blogs are a strange place. Often a neat aggregation of the different things an organisation does, rarely personal and hard work to maintain and promote.
Generally, these days, I encourage organisations to avoid launching corporate blogs. Far more interesting and credible are proper blogs, written first-hand, by staff on their own channels. Staff who want to blog, not because they think they should.
However, many of you will have inherited a corporate blog, or be expected to contribute to one, because that’s the way it is.
Some are awful and not really blogs. Others are interesting for a mooch around.
Here’s a few ideas to make your corporate blogging a bit different:
- First off, re-post your blog in a couple of different places, including your LinkedIn profile. Not a link back to the corporate blog, but a dedicated post using LinkedIn Pulse. All the teams we work with are say that staff posting their own blogs to Pulse are enjoying a much greater number of views and comments. That’s my experience too.
- For more technical or academic posts it would be worth re-posting these on The Conversation.
- Move away from report-style posts and congratulation pieces, to more specific, personal angles. What’s the author learned or experienced lately? Do they have a favourite source of inspiration or a tip to share?
- Is there a quirky angle or piece of trivia related to your story that will hook a reader’s interest? The history of names, buildings, or a behind the scenes perspective is what drives popular daily reads like Mental Floss.
- Ask yourself – is the contributor cut out for writing? If not perhaps they should say what they need to say in a short film? Blog posts don’t have to be text (but don’t forget to include some captions or a summary of the film).
Image courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/contentious/ under licence CC BY 2.0