How to Build a Business Blog

Though I won’t meet the majority of the people who read SugarBank, many of you are strangers I consider friends. I’m acutely aware (I’m ‘a-cute’ too but that’s a different conversation) this blog is my face, action, and every word I say to a large group of you. By necessity this blog is me and I try to make sure it presents a persona people have fun hanging out with.

So blogs are avatars.

Without a handshake or a face, bloggers survive purely via a reputation for being honest, entertaining or erudite (I don’t actually know what erudite means). Even the most corporate blogs, gathering their material from press-releases, know the only way they can maintain their readers respect is by commenting on and criticizing PR hackery instead of rubber-stamping it.

Blogs are not:

• Direct mail - “ON SALE TODAY! The Floppytronic 40,000 is now available for just 3 low monthly payments…”
• Clumsy sales pitches - “Driving my Ford F150 into work today I was struck by how the Premium Vortex air-conditioning is able to keep me cool in the worst LA traffic has to offer…”
• PR or crisis management - “Despite this weekend’s sever troubles and some unfortunate lost orders, we at Amazon are proud to still deliver over 98% of packages on-time…” (there’s a better, more honest and open way to say sorry)

So when a handful of business and people recently approached me with an interest in buying SugarBank the question at the bottom of the pile, after all the above had been explained by me was, “How can we make money from your blog?”

The answer is simple. Business blogs are corporate avatars.

The first attempts by companies to build avatars was called branding. Branding experts hoped you’d believe the people and things in ads were somehow like the companies they cavorted with. Marlboro wanted you to feel like a smoking cowboy, not a oxygen-bottle dragging invalid. Budweiser wanted you to think about tanned girls in Daisy Dukes, not fat men fighting in bars. Branding meant seeping into peoples mind’s by constant repetition and that meant advertising, which meant messages had to be short and simple. Sometimes it worked, more often it didn’t and only companies with deep pockets could afford to try and pound their way into our collective subconscious.

Blogs give branding to everyone. Instead of forcing a company to build a personality 30 seconds at a time on TV, they allow business to use real people, with real personality, to become the talkative embodiment of their brand.

Thought of in that light, covering a corporate blog in ads and judging its performance by how many boxes it shifts is ridiculous. You don’t hire a celebrity to represent your company and then require them to sell memberships on TV. You’re buying their glamour, character and influence. Bogs work the same way.

Some companies have had avatars for years, Apple’s Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, being famous examples. When Steve Jobs spends five minutes every six months telling a room full of people about the new iPod, he sells more of them than all of Apple’s other advertising combined. He’s not selling anything directly, just telling his friends (the Apple faithful) how cool he thinks they are. That’s what blogs can do for companies.

The question is, can your organization endure the detergent sunshine a blog will bring to bear, knowing that means they’ll have to deal with some mistakes in public? Understanding that means discussing your competitors honestly as well as yourself? Realizing that your most earnest critics are often your most passionate customers.

‘Yes’ is the only sane answer to that question. There are only two types of problem, real ones worth fixing and misunderstandings to be explained. A blogger can help with both, not only bringing a company an endless stream of attention, but also via the informal focus group its readers represent.

(When Apple announce their plan to ‘fix’ the scandal of their iPod factories they’ll be the only ‘cruelty free’ MP3 player people feel confident to buy and Steve Jobs will have earned respect as a compassionate capitalist.)

Of course, that makes blogs useless for selling the kind of junk which can only survive in the controlled environment of a late-night infomercial, where even unhappy customers feel too ashamed to tell their friends about the mistakes they’ve made, but why invest in marketing when you could be fixing your product?

To anyone who’s thinking of building a blog for your company that’s how I believe you should do it. Make sure the companies something to be proud of, then make your blog the person that company would be. That way you’ll command an audience of friends who will listen to what you say - advertising that can’t be bought.