2.1 How Does The Set Up Of A Blog Contribute to a Blog's Success?

posted: November 2, 2006 3:02 AM

We asked some questions about how a blog’s set up affects the relative success of a blog.  We chose the most important reoccurring issues described by the interviews.  The culture of the company was another important factor that can play a major role in helping to make a blog a success; the issue of culture is described in section three.

Strategic Planning

A number of the corporate bloggers thought that without a reason to blog, it is not a good idea just to start blogging.  They felt it was important to develop blogging goals in advance.  There has to be some reason as to why a company should blog. There are a variety of reasons why companies start blogging, including building a company’s brand and increasing a company’s search engine rankings.  One of the bloggers, Heather Hamilton of Microsoft, thought that corporate bloggers should have a real business goal behind their reasons to blog.  Heather stated, "The reason why I’m successful as a blogger at Microsoft is I have a job that can be accomplished through blogging, which is building our employment brand."

Other bloggers, however, did not think it was as important to develop initial blogging goals, These bloggers felt that engaging an audience online today was enough of a reason to start blogging. Dave Balter from BzzAgent said, "It’s a dive right in philosophy.  No matter what you think ahead of time, people will not cease to amaze you.  So, it’s best to learn over time."

Blogger Selection

In preparing to blog, it is important to pick the right people to begin blogging for your company.  Several of the corporate bloggers gave their insights into what characteristics to look for in a good corporate blogger.  These characteristics include:

  • The ability to listen to your audience
  • Passion for the topic
  • The ability to communicate a personality online
  • Perseverance and commitment
  • Expertise in a field or variety of topics
  • A warm and friendly approach
  • Good writing ability
  • The necessary amount of time for blogging
  • Openness to criticism


A company can use these insights as a yardstick when identifying the right corporate blogger.

Zane Safrit from Conference Calls Unlimited thought that, "The best blogger is a person who’s the most honest, the most passionate, and the most committed."

Here is an example of how Emerson Process Management selected Jim Cahill to be their corporate blogger.  Deb Franke explained that decision makers in her company had two main concerns: Would their bloggers understand their brand and messaging?  And how do you associate a single real person or a number of real people in a very large company with huge brands like ours?  Deb said, “Jim Cahill became the obvious choice, however.  He has an engineering background; he has grown into a position where he is the hub of so many stories; and Jim knows so many people across the entire company.  In addition, Jim is the brand manager for many of the most popular brands.  The objections and concerns went away."

Jim from Emerson continued, "We didn’t expect the people who did have the expertise to begin blogging and building up a number of posts.  So, the strategy was that I would be a connector to the experts around the organization where I could tell their story individually and pop back on them in a few months based on what was going on there.  From other people in the organization they looked at it as a pilot for the company, but we wanted to show people both internally and externally that this could be effective and kind of a building block to get more bloggers going overtime."

Reading Other Blogs

Reading other blogs in your industry is crucial in gaining an understanding of your industry’s blogging community.  Many bloggers suggested monitoring other blogs for an understanding of their blogging community, ideas for posts and uncovering industry trends.

David Paull of MSInteractive's own readership grew the more he read and commented on other blogs.  David said, "I think it’s critical, if you want to have a successful blog, to comment on other people's blogs.  I think you have to engage in other blogs, otherwise just getting the word out about your blog is very hard to do."

Practice With An Internal Blog Before Going External

Starting a blog internally helps your employees to become familiar with blogging.  Ultimately, this makes the launch of a public blog smoother and its implementation more successful.

Deb Franke and Jim Cahill at Emerson Process Management specifically recommended an internal blogging strategy.  Initially Emerson set up an internal blog so employees could get used to the idea of blogging and podcasting.  The more employees that became interested in blogging and began to write on the internal blog, the more writers were added to the external corporate blog. Once the company had set up their blog, Deb and Jim worked with the HR and legal departments to set up a policy for the company, and then everyone could blog.

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