The company blog is de rigeur nowadays, with everyone from web companies to furniture manufacturers taking advantage of the content delivery system a blogging platform offers. Some are just an excuse to boost the website size with promotional copy about products and services. Others are written by enthusiastic employees with interesting things to say, yet the interaction they engender is minimal, if it exists at all. Compare this with the popularity of private blogs and the situation looks drastic.
Why does the company blog fail so badly to interact with visitors?
Why does no one care what a company has to say?
Lack of Personality
Let’s be blunt, most company blogs have all the personality of a tax form. Either they never get past company news (they’ve opened a manufacturing plant in Slough) or they’re stuffed full of shallow, promotional fluff (there’s a new range of side tables!). No-one will read a blog that’s not interesting and most things to do with companies aren’t interesting. Sorry companies – no-one gives a crap what you’re doing.
Neutered Content
Some company blogs are written by employees who get to put their name on stuff – I can think of half a dozen web company blogs off the top of my head where this is the case. The trouble here is that content is neutered. Employees have to toe the party line so any personality and opinions remain firmly in their head – not on the company website. To take an example, it was suggested to someone I know that they write ‘more positive’ pieces in future, and not just use the company blog to slag things off. Being positive might be good for the company image but it lacks honesty and that all-important personality. If you don’t say something outrageous once in a while you’ll never spark a discussion.
People Don’t Like Talking To Companies
Even if you get as far as leaving a comment, who are you leaving it for? The person who wrote the post or the company? Chances are another employee will reply to you, but you weren’t trying to connect with them at all. It’s like ringing up a call centre twice and getting different people each time – there’s no continuity and no connection.
You might also be aware of the fact that your comment will appear on a company blog, so you should really leave a professional reply. If you joke or – god forbid! – swear it’ll probably get deleted. Your comment ends up as bland as the post was.
Competitors Don’t Want To Give You Credence
Company blogs are most likely to be read by people in the same industry – basically, people in competition with each other. If you leave a comment on a personal blog it’s ‘outside work’, but if you leave one on a company blog it suddenly becomes professional. Commenting on your competitor is like saying ‘I think you’re good’ and no-one wants to give their competitors reason to gloat. If you don’t comment on a company blog it’s as if you don’t care they exist.
After all this, are company blogs any good at all? Whilst there are loads of instances of successful ones – status blogs for example – there’s no real connection there. Quite simply, no-one’s listening.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Oho: this is a subject I know! Yeah, there are a lot of bad ones out there. A lot of the time companies bung a blog up just because they think they should, as if it somehow catapults them to the forefront of t’interweb technology / this brave new world.
The bad ones are also all over the place when it come to target readership. B2b or b2c? Who knows? Do the authors comment on others’ blogs? Unlikely.
But there are some great ones too. Most of them have one thing in common: they are personality-led rather than faceless corporation-led. People engage with people, not swirly logos. If you have a good mix of content (e.g. industry trends, how-to tips), you can get away with a good smattering of self-promotional posts and still attract comments.
In my experience, the most effective way of attracting comments on a company blog is to tackle industry issues / related consumer issues that have a whiff of controversy about them. It’s perfectly possible to write such a post without attracting the company’s ire. I guess that goes back to your point about neutered content.
A few company blogs I know about do it merely to rank in the search engines and refuse to interact with their readership.