It is a fine line. On the one hand, I think readers of a business blog expect the business to promote itself: it is, after all, a business blog. However, readers also expect information they can use, ideas, insights, and open conversation. Self promotion in the absence of these other things is what I think causes irritation.

The approach you suggest makes perfect sense (as just about all your ideas do). I think there are companies do take this approach, though I can’t think of any specific examples at the moment. I wouldn’t refer to it as “slipping” anything in, though. I’m not a purist, I guess: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with advertising and promotion – it just can’t be obnoxious. Blogging and social media in general requires a softer, more balanced communication style.

Not having read a great deal of corporate blogs in my time, I am not really in a great position to comment about corporate blogs as such.

Nevertheless, I would have thought that pretty much all of your points would represent sound guidelines with regard to pretty much any type of blogging – corporate blogging included.

What really bugs me about some of the few corporate blogs that I have read is the tendency, related to your second point, to post advertisements rather than genuine discussions. There is a time and a place for advertising, and the blogosphere is not it, and whilst there is absolutely no harm whatsoever in slipping in a mention of something good which your company is doing or how your company’s products or services might be appropriate for a particular situation, the focus should be on valuable discussion from the viewpoint of the reader.

Blog posts are not advertisements.

(a thought: do you think it would be an effective strategy to write a genuinely informative discussion and slip in ads relation to aspects of the company’s offering which are relevant to the discussion at hand in the sidebar? Do many companies do this?)

Robin, I can relate to what you’re going through. If your business clients aren’t reading blogs and getting familiar with the medium, it’s pretty hard for them to develop a blogging mentality. They fall back on old, familiar, comfortable communication styles. They should trust you because you are in the medium.

I have large corporate clients that struggle with blogging. It’s very hard for them to break out of the ‘one-way’ information booth approach. And once the blog is live, they tend to think that it will look after itself.

I have just sent the link to this post to two of my more receptive blogging clients, and will follow-through later today when I phone them.

Thanks, again for the great material.

Best, Robin

I do try to use descriptive and/or enticing headings/subheads to not only make my posts scannable but also to draw the reader into the sections that are relevant to him/her. For example, in my recent Age of Conversation 3 post, I used a call to action in all but one heading. In fact, even my post title/headline is a call to action in that post. I don’t use call-to-action headlines/headings nearly often enough, though. They’re a great way to make a post more immediate and compelling.