A company blog is not a sales pitch

Maintaining a company blog is hard work. It takes creativity, perseverance and “a human touch”.

I look at a lot of company blogs - some of them do a stellar job and some just suck. From my observation of which company blogs I like, there are some common characteristics which are common across all of them. And, well there are common characteristics across the bad ones too.

The best way to kill a company blog is using it as a sales pitch. It’s true that you want leads and conversions from the company blog but a sales pitch will never get you there. Blogs are meant to be read - and followed. Do you ever like to follow sales pitches? It’s like watching only commercials on TV. When I read and follow something / somebody, my question is always - What’s in it for me? Will I get entertained and educated?

A common characteristic of good company blogs is that they all act as mentors to the readers in the domain they work on. They achieve this by solid advice and great content which readers can use to make their lives easier. It’s probably easier to think of a particular type of audience for which you are writing a post. It will be fine if some posts do not resonate with some of the readers - the general tone of the blog should be such that the readers find useful to follow.

Asking readers to follow you is a big responsibility. People will follow you if you are a leader, not a salesman. It’s important to understand that companies do not follow blogs - people do! Write for the people - do not have a corporate tone.

Once you start putting out content which people find useful on a regular basis, they will come back to read more. This is a chance to prove to them that you are a leader and know your stuff. Conversion will be easy then. Content marketing will start working.

Great content is useful content.