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.

Although rarely talked about blogs are used almost as often as private internal tools as they are external marketing and PR tools. There are tens of thousands of companies who have intern blogs designed to aid those who work for the organization, ranging from sales blogging reports to HR related issues.

However I don’t necessarily want to talk about those issues today. A post over at experience matters got me talking about the practice of blogging on how it effects internal branding efforts. In this case the blog is an external marketing tool, read by the public and published by employees of the company Critical Mass.

It was mentioned that they have an editorial board as a method of generating ideas, which was met with a variety of different reactions. However it really got me thinking about the process of writing a blog by members of an organization can really make a dramatic difference in the understanding of the brand internally. The process of thinking about what is valuable to your brand enthusiasts and readers, the voice of the brand, and the message in order to produce quality and relevant blog posts is an extremely effective way to educate people on the brand itself.

In order to write an effective blog post you have to think about your readers (who are all advocates, potential customers, or interested parties in your brand) and what type of content they would find valuable. This process of discovery is very relevant to discovering what is important to your target market. What messaging and types of content is valuable to your target market, online and offline. How do these people want to be communicated to? and with what voice?

By assigning those who communicate with people outside the organization to writing blog posts, you end up teaching them how to “wear the brand” when they make contact with others. The values, voice, and messaging will be clear as everyone will have had to think and focus about how to communicate in a way that is true to the brand.

While there are other ways to promote internal branding, this method is proactive and keeps your brand stakeholders engaged and communicating with those who are happy to listen and respond. Rather than simply do seminars, activities, and other hokey methods why not acclimate everyone to the brand message in a way that has multiple benefits and is organic, authentic, and real?

No matter what your blog is about, no matter what you plan to use it for, you should always find and learn as much about the people who will read and respond to your blog as possible. This is with out exception, and is an integral part of the success of any blog. Regardless if you are trying to entertain people, communicate with people you know, or reach out and discuss a topic or express your brand. Even if the blog is specifically for your own personal reading and reflection, you must think about what you want to get of the blog.

Ultimately your readers are your customers, and your blog is your brand. Each post is a product. To really engage people, get them interested, and keep them coming back you must understand them. By understanding them and figuring out what they want is the only way to craft a product that they enjoy. If they enjoy your product they will return, participate in the conversation, give you feedback and tell others. Each post should reflect back to those readers, your target market.

I could go deeper in how to use the information obtained by finding and researching your target market, but I will save that for a later post. Instead I will discuss how you can go about determining your target market and how to research them.

Step 1, who would be interested?

The first step is take a look at who do you want to talk to, who is going to be interested in the subject in which you are talking about. What can they benefit from it, and how will it in turn benefit you? If you can find or think of anyone who would be interested, or any way for the blog to be mutually beneficial then you might want to reconsider the topic.

If you are talking about food, who with in the vast subject of food interest would read the blog? Chiefs, hobbiests, home makers, or just people who dine out?

What age bracket are they? If they are people who just enough a nice meal, are they cooking for themselves, or are they cooking for their family?

Where do they live, would that influence what type of content they would be looking to read?

Step 2, hone in on them

After you have developed an profile of the reader, it is critical to learn more about them so that you can use that information to shape every blog post (or product) and the overall brand of your blog.

There are plenty of ways to do market research to learn more about a target market. However blogs themselves actually provide a great way to research people with in your market. Using tools like Technorati you can easily find thousands of blogs on any given subject.

Subscribe to any blog that fits your profile, and spend time reading through their new posts, previous posts, and comments. You will quickly learn what content is valuable to the author, and to the authors reader base.

Make sure to catalog any findings so that you can quickly refer back to the data you have collected and use it to shape your product. Knowing that most young professionals who blog about your topic are interested in topic X will help shape any blog post designed to engage them.

Step 3, Ask away

After you have defined a profile and found people who fit that profile. I encourage you to reach out and contact these people. Be completely open and honest, and if you can offer them a gift for their valuable time. See if they would be willing to answer a quick survey in which they discuss what types of content they would like to see, what sites they spend their time on, and what other blogs they read.

This has multiple benefits, as not only does it give you the chance to establish a relationship with the other bloggers in the space; but it also gets first hand market research and valuable information about what topics, sites, and content is important to the people you are looking to communicate to.

After these three steps you should have a very clear idea of who your audience is, and data that backs it up. This data and information should be woven into every step of your strategy. Write every post with these initial findings in mind.