Real blogs are written by real people
Sara Smith from ViaMetric has an interesting post titled A blog is not a brochure. Amen!
(Full Disclosure: ViaMetric does some marketing work for us)
My favorite line from her post:
[Blogs are] your chance to show your customers that your company is run by actual living, breathing humans who like to think about things, and sometimes even write about them
She hits the nail on the head with this one. And it’s so easy to tell when a blog is written by an actual human, speaking in their own voice, wanting to engage in a conversation, wanting to share information. Those are the blogs I connect with. Because you’re connecting with a person. Not a sales or a marketing message.
Sara goes on to say:
For a great example of how it can be done, check out the blogs written by the Dovetail Software employees.
Thanks Sara! Our employee blogs certainly aren’t the most well-written pieces of literature on the web. I doubt any of us will ever be included amongst the list of A-list bloggers. But what we are is actual people, sharing information, engaging with other people. Why? Because the type of blogs we want to write are the same type of blogs that we want to read.
I personally hate reading something that is part of an obvious corporate marketing machine, written by some anonymous editor, geared solely towards search engine optimization. You may be able to manipulate Google or Digg, but you won’t fool real people. There are way too many good blogs that are worth reading to bother with a brochure or newsletter veiled as a blog. The Unsubscribe button is just a click away.
