Running a corporate blog – what mistakes to avoid?

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Mistake No. 1. The company blog is maintained irregularly, infrequently, or… not at all.
In other words, every now and then, as someone in the company remembers… There is such a thing as the “dead blog” syndrome. A dead blog is one that is updated less than four times a year. And although more and more business owners are aware of the need to have and update a company blog, I still sometimes browse websites that have such a non-functional or very rarely updated blog (Hello world!). This is especially true for small companies that do not have a designated person to run the blog (more on that in a moment). A dead blog is a blog that is completely useless to the company. Why keep such a blog on the server? Honestly? I have no idea. It would be better to delete it so that it does not irritate potential customers. Updating a company blog can be really difficult sometimes.

According to one study of U.S. bloggers, there are three most common problems with updating a blog: time, resources, and ideas.
Here's what the numbers say:
27% of business bloggers didn't have enough time to blog;
19% said no one else helped them with blogging; and
19% said they ran out of ideas for articles.

Another study conducted among representatives of companies in the US showed that almost 35% of company blogs are inactive . No one has done such a study in Poland, but I suspect that the percentage of inactive blogs would be even higher.

This is due to several reasons:

There is no clear strategy for blogging in the company. (We don't know what and how to publish on it.)
No one – except the IT guy who created his own CMS system – knows how to update a blog. (How to add a post, photos, etc.)
There has never been and is no one in the company responsible for the blog. (Everyone, which means no one, does it.)
There was a person in the company responsible for the blog, but they fired her (the prose of life).
No one knows that there is a blog on the site. (Extreme, but such things also happen in Poland.)
An inactive or irregularly updated blog can do more harm than no blog at all.
How to solve this problem?

First, consider: what does our company need a blog for and what is the purpose of running it? A lot depends on this. A blog is one of the forms of contact with customers. We need to know what and how we should influence them.
Designate someone responsible for the blog. It would be best if this was someone who likes to write and is interested in the industry in which the company operates and has good contact with everyone in the company. An employee with a journalistic streak.
Hire an outside company to run your blog. At least then you can be sure that it will be done by people who know what they are doing.
Set a framework publication schedule. It would be best if articles were published at regular intervals. This will accustom customers to visiting the blog regularly.
businesswoman with laptop in office

Stick to the schedule! Monitor. Publish

Mistake No. 2: Blog articles are uninteresting, boring, and not very diverse.
A well-run blog is not just a blog that is updated regularly. It is not only important how much and when , but above all what you publish on the blog. What pleases you does not always have to please your client. There is a different rule in editing a company blog than in running a private blog. You do not write about what is on your mind and what is playing in your soul. In a company all contact number list with name blog, you create content for the client, you have to think like a potential client and adapt the content to their needs. If the client does not find anything that will catch their attention, arouse interest, they will treat the company in the same way. As a company that has nothing interesting to offer and is not worthy of interest.

What content is uninteresting and boring?

All of which are of little use from a consumer perspective.

Articles written in a specialized, hardly understandable language. (After all, no one understands this. Not even those who have just graduated from high school.)
Articles that are stylistically weak. (Nobody will understand these either.)
Articles that are a technical description of the product (Why put something like that on the blog?).
Articles about the gray and boring life of a company, e.g. supervisory board meeting reports. (No comment.)
And so on, and so forth…

Monotony, i.e. posting texts of similar form and topic, can “kill” your blog.
How to solve this problem?

Take care of diverse content. The blog should feature texts that are diverse in terms of genre (guidebooks, interviews, product tests, reviews) and format, e.g. videos, photos, infographics, reports, etc.
Hire someone who has experience editing this type of content.
Outsource the preparation of blog content (videos, reports, infographics) to agencies specializing in this.
Blog

Mistake #3: Blog articles contain errors.
There is nothing worse than a blog that contains language errors. The appearance of errors in the text. Regardless of whether they are grammatical, stylistic, spelling errors, or just simple typos - it always works to the detriment. Mainly for the company's image. If you want the company to be perceived as one that employs professionals, you have to be professional in every field. Including in running a blog.

Why do errors appear in articles?

The person responsible for the blog does it carelessly and does not pay attention to linguistic correctness.
No one checks blog content before it is published.
The blog is run by random people who have no experience in writing texts.
Blog texts are written in a hurry and are not verified.
How to solve this problem?

Buy a dictionary of correct Polish and a spelling dictionary for your company. (Seriously.)
Make sure that before publishing your texts on your blog, they are proofread by at least one person. Ideally, two people should proofread them.
Make sure that the person editing the blog has enough time to run it. This way we will avoid mistakes related to rushing.
Mistake #4: Articles are too salesy
A few months ago, the owner of an online beauty store called me. He was looking for someone to run his blog because the last company that did it – as he put it – “took his blog by storm.” The owner was aware that the people who had edited the blog up until that point had screwed it up. And they did. It wasn’t a blog, it was a bulletin board…
About 90% of the articles on the blog began with the words:

Our promotion of the day is…
New in the store…
Product X this week at a promotional price…

This could not interest anyone.
Fortunately, such extreme situations are few, but still, on some corporate blogs, instead of a substantive message, a marketing message dominates.

What does this mean?

The editors assume that the purpose of a blog is to inform customers about the company, promotions, and products.
Bloggers believe that a large amount of information about promotions will translate into the number of purchases made (in fact, it is the other way around).
Blog writers have no ideas for interesting content (it's easier to add another note about a promotion...).
How to solve this problem?

Think about one thing: what would my Client like to read about ? If you find the answer to this question, you have a ready recipe for good content.
Mistake #5: The texts lack professional photos and graphics
We live in a world of image culture.
The old Chinese proverb that a picture is worth a thousand words has taken on real meaning in recent years.
Internet users pay a lot of attention to photos. After all, many of them spend all day on Instagram. Did you know that text with a photo is read much more willingly than an article without a photo? In online stores, product photos help users distinguish products with similar features (which is why product photos play such a huge role in e-commerce). On a blog or other informational site, a photo in an article is now a must.