The Blog Medic

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of posts on the challenges of becoming a corporate blogger, from choosing your company and building a community to getting the right technical setup and getting support from your board of directors.

I’ll begin the series at the beginning: The different types of bloggers out there. Do you recognise yourself here? Did I miss your “type” altogether?

1. The leisure blogger

The most common kind of blogger you’ll find, he’ll have launched his blog on a whim one late night after getting angry at something in the news. Posts tend to be few and far between, varying in quality from gems of insight to blurry cat photos. Very hit and miss, these usually have a small readership of friends and family mainly, and the author feels little guilt if it becomes a ghost town.

2. The semi-organised leisure blogger

This type of blogger has put at least a few evenings into planning the blog and there will generally be a common thread and theme to the blog, something he’s passionate about and could discuss all night long.

He’s more likely to have customised his template and may have even put some ads or an Amazon link in the sidebar, in the hope it might cover some basic hosting cost or a beer at the pub. The author will occasionally tut and say “I really need to update my blog. I should write about this…”, feeling a slight twinge of guilt at choosing to watch tv instead. He probably doesn’t feel such guilt to secretly blog on company time.

He probably hasn’t bothered putting any analytics on his site and vastly underestimates his readership. These readers arrive due to a few posts’ keywords getting picked up by search engines for terms that are probably a bit niche, to do with gorillas and peanut butter or something…

3. The freelancer

This blogger isn’t a full time writer but tends to be dedicated to getting her name out. She writes regularly, providing incisive insight into modern day issues, but for someone else’s brand, getting a small payment for every post.

She probably has a personal blog which has been deserted since the pressure of a regular job and the writing deadlines have sucked all her ideas out. She’s confident that One Day, She Will Be A Real Writer, but for now, it doesn’t quite pay the bills, so other priorities occasionally take priority over writing.

4. The full-time blogger aka journalist 2.0

This more unusual animal will introduce himself as a blogger in most circles, but will just say “oh I’m a journalist” when speaking to traditional media people, knowing very well bloggers aren’t taken seriously everywhere.

He can make ends meet through writing but feels like battery chickens in weeks surrounding big events in their field, being pushed to the very limits of how much he can write. This blogger is most likely to die from blogging exhaustion, or start regurgitating press releases just to meet targets.

5. The corporate blogger

The corporate blogger is a dove.

By that I mean, some people will watch it in awe, as some being that has fascinating connotation attached to it. A representation of world peace, magic and great wonder. Others will sneer and say “They’re just white pigeons. They’re still a pest like rats, and need to be shot”. They’ll both be right. (well, except for the shooting part, I hope.)

As a corporate blogger, she faces the challenges of pleasing not only readers and other bloggers in a similar niche, but also those put forward by her boss who may, or may not, understand blogs. It’ll involve setting targets, KPIs and forecasting, which can be a bit tricky without prior knowledge of the market!

Now, let me say that I’m not particularly fond of the term corporate blogger. “Corporate” is a big dirty ugly word in my books, which I associate to the big dirty ugly highrises in the city, faceless companies and suits where your tie is hiked up so tight that you almost turn blue.

But I’m going to use the term corporate blogger anyways. Why? Because I think everyone understands what it means: A blogger who writes on behalf of and, often, about the company that hired him/her. It can be both a blessing and a curse: Lucky enough not to have to hide your blogging window when the boss approaches, but married to a brand, for better or for worse.

While I surely don’t have all the answers, I hope that I can shed some light on this last segment of bloggers in this series of posts. I’ll offer tips & tricks based on what I’ve discovered working as a corporate blogger, as well as some fantastic gems of wisdom fellow bloggers have shared with me over the past few years.

In the next post, we’ll look at choosing the product, team and company you blog for wisely.

Tags: blogging, business, Corporate blogging, marketing, public relations

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Corporate blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.