Newsworthy vs snooze-worthy key to business blogging

Business blogs done wrong is like information releases.

News releases have developed, or maybe devolved, to painful, boring, sanitized issues. This might be why only the hardiest journalist reads more than the starting paragraph. It’s not the medium (newswires are fine disseminators) it’s the authorship.

News launch faux pas

Good stories should pull you directions in, catching your attention within the lead and drawing you down into the body, sentence by sentence. Journalists hone this skill over years. So do advantageous PR people, but too often information releases written and edited by committee rarely even meet the lowest practices of readability.

For example, consume a consider this homepage gem I plucked off the cable today (redacted to shield the guilty):
Redacted Corporation announced today the launch of their raw corporate website, www.redacted.ca. This site, complete with an introduction movie on the home page, gives information on the company’s values, people, company partners and more.

Oh goody, a webpage. Thank goodness, I think we were running short. Worse, when I arrived at this website, I was greeted with:

We are a group of businesses with a unified vision to create and follow. In essence, we put all of our drive, desire and expertise into creating anything probable.

Like unicorns? Or teaching the planet to sing? Offer me a break.

Which brings me to my point – advantageous web authorship must be newsworthy, not snooze-worthy. Where it normally goes wrong is when corporations write what they need to state (we founded our website!) versus what their audience wants to notice (this http://JAMESHOHER.COM raw site may help you . . .). It’s literary narcissism, the textual equivalent of begging for attention.

Provided this predilection for self-centeredness, corporations are often ill equipped to blog, article or tweet.

The recent common BlackBerry outage gives a handy example. While the tweeting public was busy complaining about the malfunctioning BlackBerry service, the BlackBerry team was busy tweeting happy Monday thoughts. From David Amerland on Friendly Media Today:

. . . over http://axebombermag.info 3 hours later their tech team @BlackBerryHelp, oblivious to the social media marketing disaster they were facing, were adding fuel to the pyre by cheerfully chirping from their account: -Hey #teamblackberry happy Monday everyone! Hope you all http://360havana.com had a great weekend we are back to answer your enquiries stay tuned for answers.-
Stay tuned for answers indeed.

The not-so-smart mobile

This revealed more than a disconnect with their audience, angry BlackBerry users holding not-so-smart-phones, but also a deficiency of preparation.

For content advertising to work, the business has to discern what shoppers, investors, staff, communities and politicians like to notice and publish that. Only by being audience-centric will interest and dialog implement.

And isn’t that the point of blogging, to http://BIXBYOAKS.COM speak with http://DEARTABBYTHEANSWERCAT.NET http://logos-klingeltoene.net people not at them?

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary download social media marketing agency communicatto. He is trying to be newsworthy not snooze-worthy over at communicatto.com.