Great tips on successful corporate blogging
In our profession, it's invaluable to have clients that "get" PR and the benefits it brings. It's even more valuable - and rare - for an entire company to embrace social media for collective success. We deliberately stay away from discussing our clients on this blog, but in the rare cases we've done so, it's been to offer best practices and useful tips to all of our clients and prospective clients.
One such company that we've had the good fortune to work with over the years is Arbor Networks, an organization that not only understands the value of PR, but also the impact that social media has on PR as well as communicating with customers and the industry at large.
Specifically, Arbor is an example of a company that has taken blogging to the ultimate social media tipping point: its blog has become a go-to resource for reporters, customers, and industry watchers who are looking for updates on the latest Internet threats. This came into play just this month when the country of Georgia was under both physical attack and cyberattack - an attack into which Arbor Networks' researcher Dr. Jose Nazario had a crucial vantage point. It was due to Jose's unique insight into the attacks as well as his style of sharing that information on Arbor's blog that continues to draw media attention, propelling Jose's reputation as an industry expert and resource.
Given Jose's success as a technical blogger, we want to share his personal tips on corporate blogging for technical writers. I've pulled out a few of his tips here:
- Do show a lot of enthusiasm for what you enjoy about your job
- Do use the blog to highlight your teams work, the product, and its success
- Do use the blog to highlight interesting uses of the product or service
- Do write about what you love, it shows
- Dont reveal customers unless specifically authorized to do so
- Dont badmouth your competition
For marketing people
- Do let your people speak with their own voice
- Do let your team be enthusiastic about the products and services they're building
- Don't edit more than you need to; invest in some good writing help if you need it, but keep their voice their own
- Don't force them to write on certain subjects, let them blog on what they love
His tips are worth following for successful blogging, especially for technical audiences. Now go on, blog away!
And let us know if you have any other tips to add to Jose's. I'm sure he'd love to hear them.
