Don’t abandon your business blog
2 June 2008
Of the 13 tips in the guide on How To: Write a Really Crappy Business Blog (found via John Lampard at disassociated.com) this was the one I see occur most frequently:
Never post anything. The easiest way to have a blog that’s crappy: Set up the blog, post once, and then never. post. again. This tip’s great because it involves no work on your part. It’s like you never created a blog at all. Which might have been better.
I think the rate of abandoned corporate blogs is higher than personal blogs. At least 75% against 50% is what I’ve seen while maintaining the list of 7000+ active Australian blogs here at blogs.com.au. Just as an example here are five 1 2 3 4 5 off the top of my head. I have a secondary list of non-active blogs that I maintain in the hope that they will one day have posts again but rarely does it provide any RSS activity.
It seems strange that businesses which usually pay significant amounts to maintain their image offline with expensive logo designs, costly advertisements and shiny double laminated matt business cards would let their blog stay online abandoned for the world to see a last blog post dated from over a year ago. It isn’t a good look to customers who would half be expecting to hear crickets or see tumbleweeds rolling by your blog. Neither is it fair to existing readers who would have been used to checking in to see what your company has had to say.
Either maintain a goal to write on your blog with a consistent but achievable posting schedule or close the blog down. If you are going to stop blogging and leave it online then ensure there is a farewell post encouraging customers with other ways to maintain contact with the business so people don’t assume you are no longer operating because you haven’t update your blog recently.
1 comment… read it below or add one
Hi Anthony(?),
As number 4 in your hands-out-your-pockets list, I’ll raise to your challenge.
You’re correct in saying that mine is one that hasn’t been updated in a while, however you’re incorrect in the motivation behind having it in the first place. I started it as a way to add a few how-to’s or information for clients such as this one:
Using fonts on web pages
Then I realised I could add notes for things I was working on and needed to refer to later, like:
A Networked Virtual Hosting Party on Mac OS X
The downside with the amount of interest in these notes got me caught up having to keep up a blog based on public expectations rather than one that was for my notes and my clients.
I’d be interested to know how you came by it. The reason I ask is that the biggest interest I got was in the Zend Framework/PHP articles and if you followed it for that reason you’d know that I’ve since expanded to be writing for other sites like Zend DevZone.
Also, the main reason the blog has had little attention is that it got me involved with
this Zend Framework in Action book for which we’ve been maintaining a separate blog.
Sorry for all the plugs but the point I’m trying to make is that while a blog is one way to be involved with your target audience, it isn’t the only way and you shouldn’t presume that an inactive blog indicates a lack of attention or participation with that audience. In my case I’ve actually been participating more online, just through different avenues.
To be honest I’ve noticed one thing that drives many away from bloggin is the obligation it creates. I noticed that when I got an initial burst of interest in my articles it was all too easy to get more and the aggregate sites would post almost anything on topic. That had me wondering just how much news was productive and how much was just filling a need to keep updated news for the sake of it.
On a final pedantic note; You’ll notice my blog is called “Nick’s Notepad” and was actually never intended as a “business blog”, it just got taken over by the popularity of a few of its articles. On top of that I posted a new entry just the other day as we’re now nearing completion of the book.
Having said all that I do appreciate your criticism. Your points are valid, although I would ask just how many of us (myself included) are following blogs because they are in our RSS readers rather than than because they necessarily improve the quality of our life.
Oh and as a final final note, it costs me little more than my time as, being a developer, I set it up myself.
Cheers,
Nick
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