Companies and individuals often, in their enthusiasm, start blogs without thinking of how to develop them further. As a result, a company blog suddenly starts publishing articles on cooking, recipes, music, and a bunch of other topics that are in no way related to the company or their message. So how do you think your customers will react when you they go to your blog looking for technical articles and all they find are cute cat videos? Of the millions of blogs on the internet, very few become popular for all the right reasons. Bad publicity for company blogs should be avoided at all costs by any company as this will eventually hurt the company’s brand image. So what are the types of blogs that you must avoid to give credibility to your blog?
The “Testing… Testing.. mic check” blogs
You may have seen many blogs on the internet with the first post saying something like “Hi, everybody…. This is my first blog” or “Yay! I have a blog”, which is followed up by two or three small posts and then blog posting stops. If you want your blog to be popular, you need to decide the kind of content that you are going to publish on it. This will give you direction and will help you create posts in a logical manner for your blog.
Astroturf blogs
There are many blogs out there that mimic the style of highly successful and technical blogs but are actually created by sneaky advertisers. Instead of being actual reviews of new gadgets and technology, these are blatant attempts by advertisers to promote their otherwise-not-so-great products. You may have stumbled upon such blog posts on the Internet. A blog that looks credible will suddenly post a glowing review of a product that seems suspect at the get go. These thinly-veiled marketing tricks are obvious to any reader, so avoid posting such articles about your company’s products.
The “Mean” blogs
Certain blogs are created just to mock, deride or insult other blogs, companies or people. Although this is generally seen with celebrity and gossip blogs, there are many people out there who focus specifically on companies and who post snarky articles about any product that those companies have come up with. Sadly, these blogs are very popular but readers usually have no respect for such bloggers. To be an authority blogger it is essential that you create fair and balanced articles instead of picking on others.
Promotional company blogs
This is a mistake that even large companies make. Their blogs contain posts only about the company – information about every minute change occurring in any location of the company. Readers want to gain useful information and not just read about company news. On the other hand there are companies like Amazon and IBM that post articles about industry trends, new technologies, tutorials, etc. that are relevant to the company but are in no way promoting the company.