Three Solutions to the Corporate Blogging Paradox
The corporate blogging paradox
Corporate blogs suffer from an almost insurmountable paradox: you can write something interesting to readers, but it will make your company uncomfortable. You can write something that will make your company comfortable, but it won’t be interesting to readers.
The corporate blogger has a difficult decision to face. Do you want to gain an audience, build relationships with readers, and strike a cord of authenticity — while at the same time drawing heavy fire and criticism from your company? Or do you remain under the protection and guidance of the company (which pays your salary, remember) by writing safe content that supposedly furthers their goals but which connects poorly with your readers?
It’s not an easy decision to make. It appears that most corporate bloggers stick with the latter. And the results are telling. A recent Forrester poll found that only 16% of people actually trust corporate blogs. That means that more than 8 out of 10 people pretty much feel corporate blogs suck. If you can’t trust a blog, it’s hardly worth reading. And equally problematic, it’s hardly worth writing.
I usually tend to assume corporate bloggers are second-rate marketers who don’t understand the social media world or writing. But I’m a corporate blogger (I run LDSTech) who first started out as a personal blogger. My I’d Rather Be Writing blog is supposed to be an innovative technical communication blog. Yet I can’t really ignite a corporate blog despite having time and energy (and billing code) to do it. Why? What is the secret sauce to corporate blogging that I haven’t figured out yet?
Sometimes I believe I’m trapped by the paradox I’ve described. I’m not writing the real stories. Unlike with my personal blog, I’m not following my own instincts for what would be interesting. This is because the juicy stuff doesn’t get approved; it doesn’t align with the business scope and plan and purpose. The articles die with the product managers who shy away from the hot topics.
Once as a teenager I had the opportunity to visit with Steve Benson, a cartoonist. He was also the son of Ezra Taft Benson. Steve said that as a cartoonist, his job was to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” This advice has always stuck with me. Applied to corporate blogging, it puts the blogger in a precarious position. Do you afflict the company and comfort the reader? I’m not sure how long such a writer lasts in that position before the company decides it has had enough, no matter how many hits the articles are getting.
Industry Expertise
The only corporate blog I honestly follow is Scriptorium, and I’m not sure it counts as a corporate blog. Scriptorium is an XML publishing consultancy. I think their blog’s business-case purpose might be to get readers to see them as a trusted, go-to source for XML needs. But I find that their blog looks outward much more than inward. They write as industry experts, commenting on trends, technologies, news, and other industry topics. I don’t think I’ve ever read a post that overtly advertises what Scriptorium actually does. In fact, sometimes I’m not even sure what they do (is it DITA, XML, content strategy? content management?) Still, I really like their blogging model — positioning themselves as general industry experts.
To be an industry expert, you have to keep a pulse on what’s going on. You have to immerse yourself in other blog posts and releases and trends. As an industry expert, not everything you write will tie back to your company’s specialization, products, or services. It will merely relate to your field as a whole. For example, Scriptorium’s latest post is on the Perversion of Indexes. The post touches on the difficult of creating indexes with XML editors and modular content. I don’t know what Scriptorium does with indexes in their consulting, or if they have any kind of indexing tools or practices. But the impression I get is that Scriptorium is up-to-speed with index trends. And I begin to trust their voice.
Would such an approach work with other corporate blogs? I’m not sure, but it might be a more fruitful approach than writing about topics that make the company uncomfortable. Commenting on tech in general, and analyzing its relevance to the audience, might be a good way to stay relevant without making everyone in the company avoid speaking with you. As long as the focus is outward, rather than inward, you can avoid the marketing speak and heavy promotional tone, as well the self-inflicted martyrdom that a true journalist would probably undergo.
Customer Focus
Another common strategy in corporate blogs is to focus on the customer. Spotlight how your customers are using your products, their tips, tricks, questions, experiences, etc. This focus can shift the attention from the company to the customer, giving the impression that as a company you care about your users.
The problem with this focus is that spotlighting users no doubt involves a filtered selection of happy users, and ignores the angry customers or the ones who are sallying against your company with ugly shouts. And will you really address their true pain points and struggles? Or their road map demands? Essentially this focus can come across not too unlike a list of testimonials that companies sometimes display — a carefully selected list of people who have only the best praise for you. Other readers know this, so the appeal of the content remains low.
How-to Information
A third approach around the corporate blogging paradox is to avoid journalistic topics altogether and instead focus on help information, in the form of how-to’s, best practices, tutorials, and other instructional material. This approach may make the most sense: if you can’t write the real stories, why write any stories at all? Writing lukewarm stories that aren’t appealing to anyone is hardly any way to embrace the life of a writer. If you have this kind of all-or-nothing writer personality, you’ll probably find more space to breathe in the safe arms of help material.
Help material is almost never offensive. The biggest offense is explaining a bug, or admitting a quirk that isn’t yet fixed. Additionally, help material is universally welcomed into the world of useful information. Its content value is immediate and undeniable. Is it interesting? Maybe not. But it’s sure to keep you far from the edge of corporate danger, while at the same time not forcing you to sacrifice your journalistic ideals to tell the real story. That’s probably why being a technical writer is a good career for me. Because I’m too stubborn and bent on controversy to fit into the corporate blogging mode with any kind of comfortable fit. At least as a technical writer, I can avoid stirring up controversy and work on something productive. I can save my controversy digging for the off hours, on my own blog. Meanwhile, the challenge of solving technical problems, coming up with solutions, and figuring out the unknown can keep my attention and provide some level of creative fulfillment.
I really enjoyed your analysis.
However, one of the main things I have in mind after reading it is whether the company you work for is really ready for meaningful blogging and social media interaction?
If all you get for an honest voice is red tape, then perhaps the company culture is not ready for going social, or at least they don’t “get it” yet. Perhaps there is something you could do to prepare them?
The Robert Scoble tale is so widely known that even his Wikipedia page mentions it: in his work at Microsoft, he was, in fact, often critical of his own employer. And he didn’t get fired either.
It is true that most companies are probably not willing to do that. And, ironically, that is perhaps why most company blogs are not trusted.
Ville, I like your analysis. I think you’re right that some companies are mature enough to understand and embrace social media, and others are not. It’s a much harder shift to make organizationally, though, than I thought. Thanks for referencing Scoble. He did help bring Microsoft into the social media space the right way.
Great article Tom. I primarily also stick to “How To” guides that connect with positive product stories. These articles have something to offer existing customers, as well as future prospects. However, these posts don’t get massive numbers. It’s rare to write that magic article that aligns our product highlights with wide-spread industry interest.
My company (Telerik) is pretty flexible about what we write, but even then I’ve sacrificed (voluntarily) a few good ideas because they didn’t support the greater good. However, this is what we’re paid to do; communicate attractive stories that support the company & product.
Or put differently, it’s relatively easy for anyone to attract a crowd (just go outside, smear mud on yourself and start screaming about something). It’s much harder to attract a crowd while retaining your dignity and leaving a lasting positive impression.
This is why what he do is hard. It’s also how we earn our paychecks.
Love your blog and thanks for writing this!
Gabe, thanks for your comment. I agree that writing a successful corporate blog is hard. You’ve nailed the challenge, and why a good corporate blogger would be so worth the pay (because it’s not writing anyone can do). I guess I’m just not convinced that it’s even possible to create a corporate blog that is on par with an independent blog in terms of appeal, trust, authenticity, and transparency. It is somewhat futile.
Didn’t even read this article, though I’m sure it’s brilliant.
Happy Birthday, Tom!
Hope it’s full of your favorite things. We love you.
Tara & Aaron
ps- Saw you posted a review of Lonely Polygamist – look forward to reading it today.
Tara, thanks so much for sending me that Udall book. I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you guys come visit again soon.
Thanks, Tom. As usual, your analysis is insightful and well presented.
You seem to assume, however, that all corporations want to hew to the party line and never engender controversy. While that’s true in many cases, as Ville has said, it isn’t true for all. One of the reasons Scriptorium has such a good blog, I think, is that they don’t ask their employees to wear straitjackets. Julio and I try to take a similar approach on the SDI blog — although we’re not such gifted writers as the Scriptorium staff.
Many companies understand in a vague sense that a blog is an essential piece of the marketing and CRM apparatus. Only a few, however, understand that it’s about more than simply parroting the party line and hiding behind whatever image the company is trying to project.
While the blog needs to be in harmony with the corporation’s overall branding and marketing messages, it can and should go beyond that — performing a function that traditional marketing can’t. By being interesting and by engaging with people in the marketplace, it can build the perception that the corporation is knowledgeable and trustworthy.
Larry, thanks for commenting. I forgot that you blog for your company, SDI. I think you guys do a tremendous job. I’m not really sure what SDI is all about, but you maintain a friendly, professional tone on a lot of timely topics.
You said, “While the blog needs to be in harmony with the corporation’s overall branding and marketing messages…” Doesn’t this predicament bind us in an inescapable trust problem? If everything one writes is a branding/marketing message, how do we gain the reader’s trust?
Tom, the key word is “harmony.” While the blog should avoid subverting the company’s branding efforts, I didn’t mean to imply that it should be in lock-step with a narrow, rigid set of messages.
Also, many companies (wisely) try to build a brand that includes trustworthiness as a core element. In this case, we’ll write messages that are designed to gain and keep the readers’ trust.
Thanks for the nice words about our blog. You wrote:
The answer is: Yes. All of those.
As a consulting organization, we typically get customers when people are dissatisfied with the status quo (AND there’s a good business reason for a change). That implies that an informed (potential) customer is better for us than an uninformed customer—the people who know about industry trends are more likely to consider changing their processes.
Our biggest blogging challenges are different from what you’ve identified in your organization. For us:
* Controversy is our friend. Controversial posts generate traffic, discussion, and engagement. However, we don’t want to just stir the pot because we can.
* Most of our juiciest stories can’t be told. We can’t throw our clients under the bus to get page views.
* Our metrics indicate that thoughtful, reasoned posts get a lot less traction than posts with a catchy title, a rant, or a cat video. Preferably all of the above.
Finally, I’d note that there are other examples of “industry expert blogging” as a marketing tool. I would point to Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group) and Mark Kellogg (former CEO of MarkLogic).
Sarah, thanks for joining this conversation. I hadn’t realized that a consultant would probably have many juicy stories to tell about customers. It seems that everyone probably has a danger zone that he or she can’t enter. Even independent bloggers can’t blog about their boss or expose company stories. I guess everyone has a “no-write” zone that we negotiate. On my wife’s blog, Seagull Fountain, she has to refrain from telling stories that would hurt her family and friends, even if she really wants to write them. That usually doesn’t stop her writing about me, though.
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