What’s Stopping You from Having a Successful Blog?

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of corporate blogging built into your com­pany.  This series will walk through the process, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.

The Evolution of Blogging

Blogs have evolved. At first, they were a forum for individuals to express their thoughts. Then, CEOs and other executives started blogging in an attempt to establish themselves as thought leaders. Now, corporate blogs give every member of the team a voice and an opportunity to contribute.

As corporate blogs have evolved to include more bloggers, companies have struggled with building a solid and continuously improving blogging practice.

Common problems that you will probably encounter include:

• Lack of buy-in and/or commitment from your CEO and senior management team, which will make your employees believe that it is not a priority
• Lack of clear and measureable goals, which will make it difficult for you to monitor progress and make adjustments
• Getting your employees to start blogging, to do it well, and to continue to improve over time, which will prevent your program from flourishing
• The lack of a clear voice and focus, which will prevent your blogs from resonating with your target readers
• Inconsistent posting, which will lower the value of the blogs from your reader’s perspective
• Writing that is not keyword optimized, which reduces the ability of your target readers to find the blogs through search engines
• Not focusing on the conversion vehicles (the vehicles that you use to get your blog readers interested in exploring the rest of your website and better understanding your products and services and how they might benefit from them); this will reduce the opportunities you have to convert your blog readers into sales prospects
• Not doing enough to market your blog through social media sites, e-mail newsletters, and/or other marketing channels, which will reduce the potential impact of your corporate blogging practice
• Not sharing the results of the efforts with employees, which will prevent them from becoming motivated and inspired by the results of their good work
• Content challenges (e.g., the content is too sales-oriented, the content cannot be re-purposed, there are many different audiences that need to be addressed, etc.), which will prevent your target readers from receiving the full potential value from the blogging effort
• Not appointing an administrator to manage the program, which will prevent problems from being addressed and improved.

Next week, I’ll start outlining the steps for each role to help your company launch a corporate blogging initiative.