Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Bloggers in business need to be more personal
Bloggers in business are failing to take up the blogging challenge. According to a recent survey, less than 5% of businesses are actively blogging. In Europe the situation is worse with only 2.5% of companies having a blog. This is in spite of the fact that Business Week magazine said in May 2006 that blogs were no longer something you could choose to do - they are a "business prerequisite".
However, business bloggers are finding that they aren't getting readers. So is it any wonder they are not encouraged to write blogs? Well, there's a reason they are not getting readers - the blogs are too "corporate". No-one is interested in your company. For business leaders to understand this is sometimes difficult - but no-one, not even your investors are interested in the company. They are interested in the people who run the company.
In the blogging world it is just the same. Readers are not interested in the company, they are keen to read about the people in the company and their thoughts and ideas. Is it any wonder corporate blogs get few readers? It's because corporate blogging is well, corporate...yet it needs to be personal.
This was highlighted in a recent interview given by two of the leading people who run Blogger.com. Elva Ramirez and Eric Case told the Wall Street Journal that blogs are personal. In other words the people behind the leading blogging technology have realised looking at millions of blogs that what people want to read is personal stuff.
So if you have a corporate blog, or are thinking of one. Forget it. Instead, write blogs about the people in your business. That will get readers and help establish your thought leadership in your industry.
Labels: blogging
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Hey Graham,
Excellent article. A lot of starters in corporate blogging write their blogs like they write marketing pieces - which defeats the purpose of blogging altogether!