Only a couple business blogs manage to catch the essence of an interesting blog. Bad business blogs are far from being personal and insightful, instead they tend to promote all these fancy technology. High-profile blogs influence allot of people in there opinion about services and applications in the world but is this necessarily good?
Not really, there is nowadays a big gap between bloggers who give their honest opinion and those who only promote their product, their company and or company opinion. I see the point of a business blog is about putting a human face on a corporate image, but what is a human face worth without blogposts about "silly things" as your favourite color, your silly photo's or your opinion on that new James Bond movie?
Nothing, and allot of people see this personal kind of blogging, inappropriate for a business blog because it doesn’t relate to the goal of looking professional. I see this as a common mistake, because being personal creates a friendship with you readers and professional blogs create a certain customer-company relationship. Personal blogposts can help people create a better image of who you are and what you think your company should stand for. That’s why I think business blogs don’t work, since they tend to cover a honest opinion with marketing talk.
Why would you hide behind your professional image? Because you are afraid to be wrong. Deeply imbedded in nowadays society is that wrong equals failure. And talking about failure and being wrong makes you look unprofessional. And I think that in the blogging society this is mostly turned around and people find it fascinating and interesting to read about failure and problems and how people handled them.
Blogs are there to change the way we look at the professional world, and personalisation is a big part of that. Taking away the personalisation in blogs is wrong, because the online world still tends to see every blog as a personal website about someone.
Personal Blog : Lurker > Getting familiar with the Author > Friend.
Professional Blog : Lurker > Custumor.
Its only a matter of time for a new buzz word for professional blogs to arise.
Discussion
You are right, but there are a couple out there worth reading. Which ones do you think manage to catch the essence of an interesting blog?
January 15, 2007
There are a couple I would have to mention :
http://www.37signals.com/svn/
http://photomatt.net/
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/
http://tedblog.typepad.com/
http://www.usarchy.com/
An especially intresting one is : http://blog.flickr.com/ were they connect with their readers pretty much by displaying that came out of their own system.
I think whether its a bussiness blogs or personal blog the one thing always to remember is that, pretty stories dont help. Talking about problems, failure and how to overcome these will help and connect with your readers. And I believe that whatever you post you should always include your own opinion, since that is why they come to a blog to hear a person speak, not a marketing machine.
I think www.frankwatching.com was a website doing this, but has fallen of my list because of its endless talk about Web 2.0 and lack of opinion on subjects and guest blog posts.
Do I suceed in getting that "personal" connection? I am not sure, I am not sure if my consistency in blogging is high enough, to keep that connection.
January 22, 2007
Those are fine blogs indeed and I think you're right about corporate blogs needing a personal opinion. Maybe not in every post, but at least throughout the biggest part of the blog.
January 23, 2007
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