One Factor that Will Kill a Corporate Blog

Having a corporate blog is a great idea. After all, a blog can:

• Build SEO and attract visitors to your site
• Provide a platform for exchanging ideas with prospects and customers
• Strengthen your brand
• Serve as the hub of your content marketing efforts
• Establish you as thought leaders in the industry

This last bullet point establishing thought leadership has been a major motivator of most of the companies I have helped launch a corporate blog. They want a venue for sharing the innovative ideas they bring to the market, and they want to gain prestige and attract interest.

But despite their enthusiasm to launch a blog, many companies balk at the effort it takes to actually maintain one. Naming the blog and creating a space for it on the website is one thing; making it effective in the long-term is another task altogether.

The number one barrier I have encountered to establishing thought leadership through a corporate blog is a lack of commitment. A blog will die a slow (or sometimes not-so-slow) death when an organization fails to develop a culture committed to establishing thought leadership through content marketing.

Establishing this kind of culture can be difficult. The following are two straightforward tips that make the task doable.

1. The executive team must lead the way. This seems like a no-brainer, but it is by no means easy. Executives are busy. They are also the main thought leaders in the organization, and they have the clout to drive participation in the blogging effort.
2. The marketing team must recruit additional thought leaders in the organization to take the pressure off of executives. These thought leaders must receive formal responsibility to share their insights with blog writers, and executives must empower them with time to participate.

Naturally, executives and other team members shouldn’t have to take on the legwork of maintaining a corporate blog. After all, that’s what writers like me are for. Nevertheless, their insights are absolutely essential for establishing thought leadership. With enough participants, a 30-minute interview every other month is all the time it will take out of their busy schedules.