All too often people or companies start up a blog with out really thinking through what they plan to do with. The ease of blogging and the lack of information available makes this an easy mistake. After all most people will tell you that all you have to do to start blogging is head over to Blogger, Wordpress, or Typepad and sign up. Sure, that can get you started but it would get you an effective blog.

What is your blog subject?

I say subject because you really need to focus on your topic. Many times new blogs become about a very broad range of topics rather than focus on the particular niche of content that is going to produce the greatest results.

If you try and become known for your great product, don’t dilute the focus of the blog by splitting the focus by blogging about great project management.

Now that isn’t to say you can’t write about other topics, but really try and focus the content on your niche. People will start reading if you have great content in one area, rather than good content in seven different areas.

Come up with a name, and URL

I say URL over a domain because in a lot of cases it makes sense to have the blog hosted on another website (for SEO and link juice reasons). However you should still try and think of a name for the blog for branding sake. It is easier to remember and converse about a blog with a name, rather than saying “So and so’s company blog.” The URL should reflect that name (either as a subdomain or subfolder).

The name should reflect the topic directly. If you were to just hear the name of the blog it should give you a pretty clear idea of what the topic of the blog is.

Think about the blog “personality”

This will play into the tone of voice that you are going to use, the type of posts you will do, and how the blog will look. Is your blog funky, fun, bright? or is it traditional, subtle, clean? The personality should reflect the name, and focus but there is some room to push the boundaries a bit here.

People read blogs for the content but also for the personal true connections. So it is important that you express the personality well, failure to do so could prevent any sort of real following to build up as it will seem unauthentic.

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.