Why Your Company Blog is an Epic Failure (and How You Can Fix It)

How’s your company blog doing?

Keep that question in mind, while I tell you this story. I have a friend, who worked in a small retail shop in his younger years, and he loves to relate this to anyone who will listen.

Like most any store, sometimes, it was busy, and he didn’t even have time to take a deep breath and collect himself. He was too busy helping customers, manning the cash register, and answering phones.

Other times, though, the place would be dead for hours, so he’d spend some of his time reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle. This was before smartphones. He would only read or do a puzzle if all of his tasks were done.

But that wasn’t good enough for his boss, and eventually, his boss caught onto his crossword puzzle habit and told him that even if the store wasn’t busy, my friend had to sweep the store. No matter what.

Even if he’d just swept fifteen minutes ago, he was expected to sweep again.

His boss wanted to know he was busy. And sweeping showed his boss he was busy. It wasn’t providing any value to the store, but it was consuming a lot of my friend’s time. He spent a lot of time sweeping clean floors, and it did no good for anyone. Now, think about this story and think about your company blog.

When was the last time you posted? What was the post about? Is it getting any traffic? Has anyone read it? When I speak with potential clients, one of the first questions I ask is if they have any on-site content.

Many companies show me their blogs and, much to my dismay, the content is junk. It’s like they’re publishing, just to show they have a company blog.

They’re sweeping, just for the sake of sweeping. They’re not providing any value. They’re just doing something to look busy.

I see it often, so I’d like to give you a few helpful tips on how to turn it around. I’m not promising instant traffic and conversions. You still need good links and a content promotion strategy. It will still take time.

But, it’s hard to build links to a website with weak content, even if the website has a company blog. No more publishing, just to publish.

It’s a waste of time, and I know time isn’t something you have an abundance of. So, here’s why your company blog might be a failure, with a few suggestions to remedy your situation.

Your Company Blog Has No Purpose

We’ve already covered sweeping just to sweep, but I want the same feeling to hit you.

Think back to elementary school or middle school. You probably had schoolwork you liked, whether it was math, history, science, or English. Other schoolwork might not have been your favorite, but at least, you were learning.

But, we all had that one teacher, who just piled on the worksheets. This usually happened during class time, and it was the first time any of us ever understood the concept of “busy work.”

So, you filled out the worksheet, and it took up your class time. But what did it accomplish?

Do you remember what those worksheets were about?

Of course not.

Work should have a purpose. And, make no mistake; blogging is work. You might love it or hate it, but it’s work, either way. So it should accomplish something.

Before you write and publish a blog post, be able to answer one question:

What purpose does this blog post serve?

A blog post can:

• Inform
• Entertain
• Answer a question
• Capture email signups
• Describe a product or service
• Give a “how to” on a specific process
• Show “behind the scenes” at your company
• Discuss an event
• Review a product

I’m willing to wager there are more purposes than those I listed, but you must know what you want to accomplish with each post.

For most companies, informative blog posts do well. Lists, how-tos, and guides are popular.

But, telling a funny or entertaining story can work just as well.

If you write something memorable, people will come back for more.

If this struck a chord with you, because it’s something you’re missing, check out this excellent post from No Sidebar on blogging with purpose.

You Provide No Value

Your company blog can have a purpose but provide no value to your audience.

If your purpose is always getting email signups and driving conversions with every post, it’s probably not valuable to your target audience.

Informative content is valuable. Entertaining content is valuable.

A sales pitch is rarely valuable to someone who’s reading your company blog for the first or second time.

No one wants to read a series of sales pitches.

Time is finite, and your audience could read a million other blogs that aren’t aggressively pushing a product or service.

Instead, think of every blog post as a miniature linkable asset.

Not every post must be an ultimate guide or an in-depth article that reveals game-changing data. It just has to be valuable.

If someone can read your blog and answer the question, “What did I get out of reading this?” with a positive answer, you’ve done your job.

Approach every blog post as a piece of content someone may want to link to, because it’s valuable, even if it’s a short post.

You Don’t Serve Your Audience

If your blog posts are valuable, to whom are they valuable?

It may not be your target audience.

In the digital marketing world, the phrase “know your audience” is repeated so often, it becomes background noise.

But you know what? They’re right.

If you’re just guessing what your audience wants, you might not be guessing correctly.

It’s impossible to know, until you ask them. Ask your audience what kind of content they want. Even if it’s inconvenient to track down someone and talk to them about your blog, you still must do it. There’s no getting around it.

You can send out a quick Google survey (they’re really easy to make) over email or just take one of your favorite customers to coffee. And then, repeat the process with a few more customers.

If you hear the same questions again and again from your current customers, write down those questions and use them for blog posts. If you notice search traffic coming to your website for a certain term on Bing, Yahoo, or another non-Google search engine, craft a blog post around that search term.

In a snap, you can use Answer the Public to figure out some interesting topics surrounding your company’s niche.

But, there’s no substitute for asking your audience what they’re interested in reading.

You Have No Personality

There are millions of company blogs on the internet, and the only thing that separates your blog from the teeming masses is your voice.

You don’t need to force being funny or outrageous, and you don’t need to over-exaggerate your personality. You just need to let your real personality shine through in your content.

I can’t tell you how you should write, because everyone is different. My best advice is this: Be conversational. Write how you talk. If your audience sees something authentic in your voice, they’re likely to make a connection.

Going back to elementary and middle school, for a moment, many of my potential clients’ blogs seem like “educational” film strips from the 1960s. You know, the kind we had to suffer through when the teacher didn’t feel well (or had a hangover).

Worse yet, they remind me of those boring sheets the teacher would put on the overhead projector.

It might convey information, but there’s nothing there to keep your interest.

If you write with your own personality, you’ll connect with your audience, and they’ll come back. Even if thousands of other blogs post exactly what you post, once you make a connection, people will come back, because they like the way you write about that subject.

Even if you have a strong writing voice, you may be alienating your audience in another way.

I’ve seen so many company blogs, even recently, that have no author names or faces attached to their blog posts. It’s almost as if they are trying to hide something.

The post author is marked ‘admin’ or something similar, and the profile photo is left blank. Or there’s no author profile/credit anywhere at all.

Your company blog needs a name and a face. Or multiple names and faces.

People don’t connect with faceless and nameless articles.

You should absolutely attach a real name to each post, along with a photograph of the author. Go a step further and link to your social media accounts.

It’s impossible for a nameless corporate entity to develop an engaged following.

Who’s going to leave a comment on a blog post by a nameless author?

If this section has piqued your interest, and you want to find your blogging voice, I highly recommend reading this post from Jeff Goins.

You Use Too Many Popups and Forms

No one likes popups. Even if they increase conversions and signups, no one likes getting hit with them.

Often, they’re employed as a lazy “spray and pray” tactic to get more leads.

Some sites have so many popups that Joanna Wiebe calls them “click jails.” It’s like you can’t get out of them, without closing the page.

Too many popups are harmful, especially for small business websites. Your audience is probably hesitant about clicking around your website, so what are they going to do when they’re hit with a barrage of popups?

They’ll probably leave and find a less-intrusive reading experience.

If your content is thin and unpopular, popups will not do much for you. They’ll probably harm you.

Popups can increase conversions on high-traffic sites. And some sites are smart about how they employ popups, which is how they get results, without alienating readers.

Knowing how to employ those popups takes real knowhow, so I recommend treading lightly, unless you’re willing to conduct some serious tests.

And if you employ a “clever” opt out button for your popups, you may end up on this site.

You Don’t Use Images

I’ll keep this part brief.

People, you and I included, have short attention spans.

Using plenty of images in your blog posts helps keep people engaged. It breaks up the text and gives them a little break.

I recommend you use an image every 300 words , at least.

Images help blog posts do better. Check out this article at HubSpot for more data and reading.

You Give Up

Company blogs aren’t like hobbyist blogs and lifestyle blogs. Unless you’re a big brand, people will only visit your blog if they’re interested in some aspect of the industry you serve.

Even when your blog is good, you won’t see huge traffic overnight. Link building can help any website, with a good blog, gain traffic, but it’s not a lightning fast process.

Many people who oversee company blogs give up too soon, but they shouldn’t.

You can’t expect instant gratification with blogging.

Not every blog post must convert into a sale or an email signup. Not every post will gain backlinks, comments, and overall traction.

And that’s okay.

Even with a world of data at your disposal, not every blog post can be a home run. No matter what anyone tells you, there will always be trial and error involved with blogging and with marketing and link building.

You can’t give up. See what resonates with your audience through research, combined with trial and error.

Eventually, you’ll serve more hits than duds. But you’ll never get there if you quit.

Conclusion

I believe any company blog can be good. If you’re reading this, you care enough about blogging to produce something high-quality for your audience.

And that’s the most important thing.

Blogging takes time and labor, so there’s no use wasting time on blogging, just to publish something.

Don’t sweep, just to sweep.

Your time is too valuable for that.

Instead, approach blogging from a different perspective and create some useful content. It doesn’t need to be earth-shattering. It just has to help your audience (and your potential customers) make their lives a little bit better.

Plus, it will make this whole link building thing a heck of a lot easier for you, too.