You would think that one of the first things you figure out before starting a corporate blog would be what some level of expectation of what you will get out of it. However many times an organization will start a blog just because they hear so much about it, or feel that they should because person/org. X Y and Z have one.

Setting goals is a critical part of progressing in life, both in terms of an organization or company but also personally. Blogs are no different. The vast possibilities of a blog make it even more important to be tied closely to a goal. Failure to set a goal is like staring at a blank canvas and simply smearing paint around randomly rather than thinking about what you actually want to create.

By setting a goal (or even goals) it gives you direction in the content, publishing schedule, and methods to develop metrics to measure the success of the blog against that goal. For example an typical goal may be to get feedback from your brand advocates on any new product prototypes, or service offerings. A company could start a blog that just randomly posted what was new, and maybe that would get some readers… but you wouldn’t know if it was being effective or not.

By defining the goal of getting market research and feedback you can see how much valuable information is obtained from the blog, how much word of mouth is generated by those brand advocates who have now become a part of the product development process, and how sales were effected because of it. It also would let you focus on keeping the blog posts focused around product development cycles and releasing valuable information as necessary.

Those subscribed to the blog would be those who were deeply vested and interested in learning more about the product development cycle, and would be ten times more likely to read a post, share it with a friend, respond and offer feedback, or bookmark it for later reference.

Blogs can have several goals, but make sure you define at least one.

In trying to keep a close ear to the ground related to corporate blogging I have several google alerts with related keywords. Through one of those posts I ran across the blog post by Media Vision Blog about the failure of corporate blogs. It is true, way too many blogs that are started by companies often fail. There are plenty of reasons that this is true, lack of vision, lack of time, etc…

The truth is you have to make a commitment, and block out time to develop the blog steadily. If you can’t fit the time for a least one blog post a month then you should really access if blogging is going to be the best use of your resources with in a company. Despite the endless value that a blog has the potential of providing, it does take time and effort to build it to the point to obtain that value. The fact of the matter is that if you can’t create quality content over the span of a year then don’t bother starting a blog. You obviously have other areas of your business that provide and can provide a greater impact.

If it is a matter of finding just a little more time to blog, find ways to automate or increase the ease of blogging. Maybe blogging through writing e-mails is easier than logging into the system and typing it in. Maybe breaking up blogging into a few short periods of writing and brainstorming rather than doing it all at once could help.

Maybe you just want to outline the key points and delegate the writing of the post to someone else with in the organization, or via hiring a professional blogger.

There are plenty of ways to make blogging quicker and easier, but it will take time and effort in order to really build the value in the blog.

At this point in time there are plenty of people who realize the value of a blog and have ventured into the process of blogging (hopefully on a regular baises). However there is rarely enough thought into the mechanics of the blog and how it will be used to add value to a company or organization. One of the fundamental aspects of a blog is the voice that is used to speak to the readers, it can make or break a blog and often times it isn’t even an afterthought.

Blogs are conversational by nature, they tend to be more relaxed and casual… but they don’t have to be. Many corporate blogs chose not to have the relaxed and casual speaking voice, instead picking some medium between a PR voice and the casual voice that a personal blogger would adopt. This is OK in the right situations, even great. Some companies and industries wouldn’t benefit from a casual toned blog, they need that level of credibility and the authentic nature of a blog complements the credibility. However the point is that as a corporate blogger you need to know if that is the voice that will best suite the blog and your goals.

There are times where a more casual voice would provide the most value to a blog. Consider large consumer corporations, which feel like faceless monoliths. These corporations are often painted as evil bloodsucking money-grubbing voids, devoid of any real human characteristics despite the fact that they completely consist of people. It might be easy to try and create a blog that has shows no errors, no weaknesses, no additional areas for people to criticize and nit-pick. However what these corporations really need is a real and authentic voice, a feeling of being human. Consider the GM Fastlane blog, Bob Lutz doesn’t take the time to spell check, fix every grammatical error, and that is wonderful. Bob is a human, a person you could walk up and talk to, someone who has hopes and dreams for both himself and his company. Yet some many people see GM as a horrid faceless entity that lay’s off workers and steals pension plans. A squeaky clean blog written in marketing/pr speak would do nothing to combat this feeling, and it would have very little to add.

On the other hand, if you look at a company like AVL North America (a client of my other company) they would not benefit from a casual blog. They produce highly technical engine testing systems for use by large companies like GM, Cat, etc… Their audience doesn’t care that the people building these systems are regular guys like you and me, they want to make sure they select the best equipment to ensure they produce the best possible product they can. AVL would be better suited by a very technical in nature blog, that shows expertise and customer support. A completely different voice than that of GMs Fast Lane blog.