B2B Blogs - Not for the faint of heart

Over on B2B Online, Paul Gillen has a brief piece on a recent Forrester Research report (by Laura Ramos) on the drop-off in the number of new corporate B2B blogs, 2007 over 2006. Paul notes the report’s reason why so many B2B blogs fail: they’re treated by marketing as if they’re just another PR vehicle.

Remember how we use to talk about ‘marketing by PR’, under which those with no marketing budget would send out a release du jour:

“Acme Technista now comes with belly button lint…”

“Acme Tech unveils new strategy: plans to make money in next fiscal year…”

“Acme president named to board: Joe Blow to take active role in governance of Mapleville Little League…”

So goeth a lot of corporate B2B blogs that, desperate for content, just package up the same-old-same-old.

Paul has an excellent take on what makes for good social media content:

This philosophy is embodied in what I call the STRAIGHT principle. STRAIGHT is an acronym for the critical elements of social media content: It must be succinct, transparent, responsive, accepting, insightful, genuine, humorous and timely. A blog is a place to have personal conversations. Your contributors should have names, faces and biographies. They should speak in the first person and tell stories. They should invite response, demonstrate humility and respond openly and constructively to criticism.

I can’t really improve much on this straight talk - it’s sound advice. But I will add just on thing. Deciding to do a corporate blog takes a BIG commitment. A lot of people apparently don’t realize this - which is why you end up with all that regurgitated “cud crud” that no one’s interested in. And if it’s difficult for large companies, with plentiful resources, to make the commitment, it’s even harder for smaller ones. So I always advise my clients - most of whom are small - to think twice. Unless they have a couple of writin’ fools around who will completely get into the blogging thang, they should forget about it. (I post 3 times a week on Opinionated, and every weekday on Pink Slip, which is for all intents and purposes my hobby. It’s a creative outlet, and I have a tremendous amount of fun blogging, but keeping up with it. Yikes! it’s not for the faint of heart. So think about that commitment if you’re going to put your company’s name on it.)

Blogging is like the customer newsletter - which is always a good idea when it comes to the first edition. Maybe even the second or third. But pretty soon you run out of things to say; it’s nobody’s job; the people who produce it don’t know what to write; the people who have the info and insights, don’t have time; etc. So you drop the newsletter, and no one really read it, so no one notices it’s gone.

With blogs, the pressures are even greater. You don’t have to post every day, but you sure can’t get away with once a quarter, that’s for sure. And if you begin with a flurry of posting, then drop off to nothing, your empty, out of date blog will hang around out there forever unless you take it down. (So remember to get rid of a stagnant blog if you’ve got one languishing out there.)

And if you do decide to have a corporate B2B blog, you should absolutely take Paul’s advice.

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If you want to see the abstract of the Forrester Report, or even to purchase it, go here.

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