Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Who determines the culture and voice of your blog?



These days, companies and individuals include blogs as part of their marketing arsenal and social media outreach to promote their product or service and/or to build buzz about a corporate, non-profit, or personal brand. While some blogs have several writers or bloggers, others feature only one. So who determines the culture and voice of a blog?

If you are promoting a product or service in the B2B (business-to-business) arena, you probably use industry-specific lingo that your target audience understands and often uses. But if you are promoting something in the B2C (business-to-consumer) arena, you probably use informal language, brief sentences, and one-topic paragraphs in order to capture and keep readers’ interest.

Your blogger or bloggers most often determine the voice of your blog, so would a company president be the main writer? Or would the marketing or public relations departments take responsibility for writing the posts? Or would the IT or HR departments chime in with ideas?

Once your company or non-profit determines who will write the posts, here are some things to keep in mind for successful blogging:
  • Create a schedule that includes topics and timing for posting (daily vs. weekly).
  • Monitor word count so that you avoid discrepancies between a 250-word post and a 2,000-word post.
  • Choose graphics that align with the subject matter of each post.
  • Ask readers for opinions.
  • Proofread the posts several times before you publish.

In the words of Brian Clark, CEO of Copyblogger Media and founder of Copyblogger.com, “Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.”

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