Brand Bloggin isn't Business
Corporate or brand blogging is not business blogging. Business blogs are about a sector or a practice (agriculture, airlines, law, technology) whereas a brand blog is, in the end, about one brand. The brand blog aims to personify a brand, working with other forms of PR and advertising to give a brand a more three-dimensional character. So while it is okay to think of your brand’s blog as a tool for industry analysis or information sharing, the primary focus should be complementing your brand goals.

Articles that present the benefits and drawbacks of corporate or brand blogging are plentiful. As are articles that present generalized tips for blogging in a corporate environment (e.g. “Don’t be afraid of criticism” and “Let your authentic ‘voice’ emerge”). This piece aims to focus more on detailed advice for brand bloggers.

General Best Practices
Get a Google Alert and on the Technorati Watchlist for your brand’s industry. (You already have for your actual brand name of course, right? Riiiiiiiight????) These alerts will provide lots of potential fodder for posts. Hint: Your blog is a great place to immediately address any news that’s reported on you, both good and bad. If a blog posts something about you that you can respond to (this doesn’t include “You suck!”), post a response and send the outside blog editor a note about your response and ask him to please link to it.

Also, sign up for Google Analytics and find out when your peak traffic times are. Try to post prior to that so that the material always looks fresh.

Make your contact information very easy to find. A brand blog is a two-way communication tool, like a telephone, not a megaphone. Hint: Try to respond to all email, even if it’s just a “thank you for reading” note. Like any business, keeping existing customers is less difficult than finding new ones.

If several people post to the blog each should have a distinct voice. No need for them to exist in a vacuum either; it is fine for posters to address each other’s contributions. Further to this point, don’t be afraid to contradict (to a small degree anyway) someone else’s post. It shows that you have an open discussion going on and breeds trust. Hint: If you do this, be sure the criticism is constructive, detailed, and even humorous, as if you were speaking directly to that person.

There is debate about the wisdom of allowing comments, but enabling them creates trust (remember, telephone not megaphone). Also, you can always edit out the ones that are truly off subject and pointless.

PR is part of blogging but not the ONLY part. Don’t treat your blog as a press release page. Post brand deals and/or specials either earlier than they can be found elsewhere or as special blog-only offers and discounts. This rewards readers.

Let everyone in the corporation know what you’re doing and encourage them to send you ANYTHING they find valuable. When you do post something, send a link back to that person. Your first readers will certainly all be internal.

Stay focused. Wells Fargo’s excellent Guided by History blog draws on the bank’s, and the industry’s, rich history to create a personality for Wells Fargo that isn’t solely fiduciary. Guided By History’s Charles Riggs: “One of GBH's missions is to show off our deep historical collection, an amazing archive of interesting things. I like linking images of the material in the post, or linking a detailed image with a general image—like the brass band in a recent post. For me, images are the richest component.”

Echoing this capturing of a brand’s central qualities is Kodak’s outstanding blog A Thousand Words. Thomas J. Hoehn, director of marketing and customer experience, says of the blog’s focus, “We also want every post to contain photos—after all we are Kodak!”

Create a blogroll of sites that aren’t necessarily in your line of business. Nuts About Southwest, GM’s Fast Lane and the Free People blogs all do this very well. Also, have fun with your blogroll. For example, Brandchannel’s blogroll would include the Global Chinese Restaurant Directory.

Read other blogs within your sector and leave comments using your real name, and, when appropriate, a link back to your own blog. If you do leave a link make sure it is to a specific post of interest.

But make sure to also expand your blog reading. Katie Hartsough, editor of the Free People blog: “…keep an eye on what is happening on the internet. What are people connecting to on other websites? Look at sites that seemingly have little to do with your company… Just look at everything and always be thinking, How can I interpret this for my company, my customer, my reader?”

More Specific Tricks of the Trade
Write your posts offline in a text editor program and then cut and paste your entries into your content management system. Also, it’s best to use a blogging template that allows you to preview the post as it will appear on the screen before putting it live.

Put general links back to your blog in the body of your entries and link to outside articles you referenced at the end of your post. This keeps readers from clicking away and getting interested in something else.

Don’t link with “click here for...” Hyperlink words within your posts to make a point of them. This works exceptionally well when you link a full phrase in a post to really make a point of it. For example, this isn’t the only time I’ve written about blogging.

Revealing something personal about yourself can go a long way to making you seem human and by association adding that personal touch the blog is meant to bring to your brand. For example, use something your child said to introduce a post.

Do an end of the week wrap up of what you consider your best or most interesting posts. It needn’t be longer than three links and it further highlights your material for readers.

Polls are to blogs what the “testimonial” is to advertising: simple, much derided within its respective industry, and almost always moderately effective. Online polls are one of the simplest forms to make an audience feel engaged. Simple, easy to use, and cheap poll programs to embed in your blog are available at Webpasties. Hint: Set the poll results to show percentages and not actual number of votes.

Strikethroughs are great for making a point or a joke. The strikethrough can be used all the time should be used very sparingly.

Carly Baltes, of Garmin media relations, admits that the “hardest part of writing on the Garmin Blog is keeping the content fresh and exciting for our readers.” To that end, the Garmin blog has found a trick that should work wonderfully for almost any brand blogger if properly used over time: “We frequently write about the same product multiple times, and it’s important to us to maintain a new, fresh spin each time we post.”

Southwest Airlines Manager Customer Communications and Corp. Editor Brian Lusk shares a tip about managing photos for Nuts About Southwest: “Many of our bloggers add their own photos directly to the blog, but others send them to me separately. I have learned to rename them when I add them to my directory, and that helps me find and upload the correct photos.”

I Need a Post, Now!
“The hardest part about writing the Free People blog is posting on a daily basis. There are some days I have a really great idea, or I see something on the Internet that is perfect for the blog. There are days when there is an event at the office, or another employee passes me some exciting information, and I have a post ready in half an hour. But, sometimes, my mind goes a little blank.” - Katie Hartsough, Editor of the Free People blog.

A fresh blog is a good blog. But keeping up a posting schedule is easily one of the most challenging parts of blogging. Here are some go-to tips for producing solid content when your focus is less-than-so.

Do a search of The Onion for either your industry or a well-known term from your industry. (Or even your brand name itself if you are big enough). Onion articles are always crowd-pleasers, very often not dependent on time and are good for a day when you don’t have anything else. For example, DIVORCED BRANDING EXEC GENERATES BUZZ BEFORE GETTING BACK OUT THERE.

If you blog you probably know about Google image search. (And you also know about the dangers of exposing the brand to copyright violations, right? Riiiiiight?) But a Google image search can also be the basis for a generic post on a slow news days. Do an image search for a term within your industry and then comment on why the first image to come up under that particular search is interesting. For example, every time I think that it would be nice to be able to email my grandmother I am reminded that it’s probably better she isn’t computer savvy seeing as the first Google image result for “Abram Sauer” is a woman with a ball-gag.

Wikipedia is also an excellent resource for coming up with generic posts. Search Wikipedia for a term from your industry and post a “did you know” factoid from some part of your industry. For example, Brand Naming Firms: Because of increasing demand to stand out in the marketplace “available domain names have become increasingly scarce, with over 85 million names registerd [sic] as of 2005, according to Verisign.”

YouTube is a goldmine for posts (and easy to overuse so be careful). When you find an appropriate video, just copy the “embed” link on the right and paste it into your post. Hint: Keep the videos you select down to a maximum run time of one or two minutes. Nobody wants to watch a feature film. For example, this video on blogging embedded into this article on blogging!

Sometimes it’s okay to let others do the heavy lifting. Nuts About Southwest’s Brian Lusk: “…sometimes our supply of available posts is ‘feast or famine.’ Since we like to post daily, if we are short of posts, I will try to find an interesting post on another blog to which we can link.” This doesn’t have to be much more than a couple-sentence introduction to why the linked info is valuable, and then the link.

And in the spirit of this last piece of advice, Endgamepr.com, Blogwriteforceos.com, and Betterbusinessblogging.com are all great resources for further information.

Finally, if used VERY sparingly, the “Ah, screw it” post can be useful. Essentially, this is a post that openly admits to being off topic but doesn’t care because, damnit, it’s been a long week and last night was a late one and is it football season yet? How can it be another month? Ugh.