By Nettie Hartsock
For this edition, we turned to Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right (Portfolio Hardcover), which was released to great accolades this month.
Weil is a consultant, speaker and trainer who shows senior executives and large companies how to brand themselves as customer and employee-friendly by using blogs, RSS, podcasts, wikis and other social media.
In this interview, Debbie shares her insight on corporate blogging, content creation and how white papers can complement your blog efforts.
WhitePaperSource: Tell us about your background in content creation and how you came to be such a blogging expert.
Weil: I’m a veteran journalist (reporter and editor) who got sucked into the Internet way back in 1992 - 1993, in the days of Mosaic.
Soon after discovering the Web, I decided I wanted to be involved in the business aspect as well as the editorial side of things. I’m not clever enough to have thought of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory (editor’s note: Chris is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and a bestselling author, see The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More). But I was fascinated by the business models the Web was creating and so I went to business school and worked in corporate marketing for Network Solutions.
Then I became a consultant and initially focused on e-newsletters and website content as marketing vehicles. Three years ago, it became clear to me that blogs were the next big thing in terms of a business communications strategy.
So I dived in. If you get in the water first, you become the expert.
WhitePaperSource: How can blogging help a company achieve success?
Weil: It can’t, per se. It’s first and foremost a mindset and an approach, a desire to communicate openly with customers and to really listen. If you listen hard enough you’ll wind up improving your products to suit your customers’ needs. Eventually, that will translate to the bottom line.
WhitePaperSource: How can white papers and blogs work together?
Weil: Great question. Blogs are another form of Web content, and as such, another form of marketing collateral. If you’re blogging about a topic or issue that you happen to have a white paper on, well, by all means, points your readers to it with a link. You might also be able to
create a white paper out of a “Top 10 Tips” series that you run in your blog. Ideally, white papers and blogs should complement one another. You don’t want your white papers to be deadly dull reading; nor do you want your blog to be so light or informal that it’s not useful.
WhitePaperSource: What are the top three tips for people or businesses thinking of starting a blog?
Weil:
1. Companies don’t blog; individuals do. Developing a compelling bloggy voice is as much an art as a science. This means being informal, conversational and truly authentic on your blog, inviting interaction with your readers.
2. It’s not that hard to get started. Just do it. Then worry about measuring and monitoring.
3. This whole thing is not about being cool. It’s about following your customers where they’re going, if they’re not already there - and that’s online.
WhitePaperSource: What are three corporate blogs that you feel represent the best of
blogging and why?
Weil:
GM’s FastLane at http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/. They’ve kept at it for 18 months, so they make my top three list just by virtue of sticking with it. FastLane has its highs and its lows in terms of being really compelling. Bob Lutz, their lead blogger (and GM’s global vice chairman), is definitely the best writer. The other execs who write come across as kind of canned and press release-y. One of the highs was a post by Lutz in February asking readers for help on improving GM’s brand image. He got over 300 reader comments in response.
Google’s corporate blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/. Again, it doesn’t sizzle with inside, super-secret, truly revealing stories. But then no big corporate blog does. It’s particularly effective when Google uses the blog as a complement to a big news story or press announcement (for example, the brouhaha over the Google Print - book scanning program).
Jonathan Schwartz’s blog for Sun Microsystems at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/. His is the first Fortune 500 CEO blog and as such is one to watch. He’s a thoughtful writer, sometimes provocative. It’s a good example of a blog that’s aimed at a specific niche - the geeks, VCs, MSM, analysts and competitors who follow enterprise technology stuff. It’s also provides a tiny glimpse into what it’s like to be a Fortune 500 CEO. Wish he’d reveal more on this.
WhitePaperSource: More and more for a company, it’s about offering good content to users. What are some tips you can give on that end?
Weil: It’s *never* about your widgets. It’s all about your customers and their business needs, fears, desires, wants. Even lifestyles. That said, you can never go wrong with How-To’s and with Top 10 Tips or 7 Mistakes to Avoid. People never seem to get tired of cleverly packaged content, as long as it’s useful information.
WhitePaperSource: Tell us about your new book.
Weil: First of all, I really hope that readers will find it engaging. The Corporate Blogging Book is supposed to be a fun, informal read, much like a blog.
What distinguishes it from the other business blogging books is that I’ve written it for corporate-minded non-believers - the fearful and the practical ones. The non-cognoscenti who are still not sure how or why they should get into this blogging thing.
I hope your readers will visit the book blog at http://www.thecorporatebloggingbook.com to download Chapter 1 and poke around for other useful resources.
DISCUSSION: Discuss this topic at WhitePaperSource Forum
