verve: in bloom

Starting a blog for your company or organization is one thing, keeping it healthy is quite another. What are the vital signs that you should look for?

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research offers several vitals that are important for success. The categories are his, and you can find his ratings on the post above, but I’ll provide a little explanation below.

• Writing style: Be conversational and human. No corporate speak and no rehashed press releases.
• Topics: A variety of topics that are relevant to your readers along with wider industry topics. Think about your audience and their interests. How can you be part of that conversation.
• Humility: Openly discusses your organization’s mistakes and shortcomings (particularly if your “listening” tells you that others are talking).
• Linking behavior: Links to others, including competitors, critics and others in the industry.
• Customer inclusion: Includes customers in the conversation with snippets from other blogs or as a guest blogger.
• Dialog: Comments are enabled and published in a timely manner
• Comment moderation: Comments are allowed, even when the commenter disagrees or is off-topic with the blog.
• Frequency: Posting frequency is appropriate for the industry and is regular and predictable.

Successful corporate blogs must maintain all these vital signs to build and maintain relationships with readers. Want to get a blog started or need a check up, let’s chat.