The Internet is an excellent medium for getting your company’s message out to the masses and your company’s blog is the perfect vehicle for it. When done correctly, a well-maintained, frequently updated corporate blog can keep customers engaged and primed to purchase your new products and services. On the other hand, there are three distinct traps that some corporate bloggers fall into, losing sales and damaging their brand with a few keystrokes. In some ways, learning what not to write on the company blog can be more important than the intended message.
Criticizing Your Competition
You may have the best service in your industry. You may have the best prices. You may even have the highest quality products. These are exactly the types of things to write on your company blog.
Putting down a specific competitor in the process, on the other hand, is not.
While drawing comparisons between your business and the competition can be helpful, it’s easy to cross a line. Perhaps the easiest way to avoid this potential pitfall is to avoid naming your competition on the blog. Not only will this showcase your company’s integrity, it won’t inadvertently provide customers with a new business to price shop.
Humorous content
On the surface, a little levity on the corporate blog isn’t a bad thing. It can liven up dull copy and give readers a reason to keep checking back. The problem is that not everyone has a similar sense of humor. What you think is a bit of sarcastic fun may come off as inappropriate, rude or unprofessional to a potential customer.
If your target demographic shares your humor and possibly even expects irreverence, you can proceed with caution. For the rest of us, it’s important to draw a line in the sand to define how far is too far. Remember, once you put something on the Internet, it’s there forever – even if you delete it from your site. The best advice on writing humor into your corporate blog is to stay professional and sleep on anything you write before posting.
Sales Propaganda
To some extent, the reason for your company blog’s existence is to generate leads. You know this. Your customers know this. In fact, it would surprise your customers if you weren’t trying to sell them something.
The key is to find the right balance between sales, entertainment and information. No one wants to read a blog where every post is a sales pitch. Instead, look for ways to balance your sales copy with information about how other customers are using the product or post little-known facts about your business or industry that may entertain. Readers will click away from blatant sales propaganda, but will spend time on a site that offers them useful information, tips, tools, and informational graphics and videos.
Remember, what you write on the company blog is forever, so make it something that will engage readers, build trust and help establish your authority in your field.
