Corporate Blogs - Failing with the copy

So Forrester says consumers don’t trust corporate blogs (Time to Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas). Although it saddens me, it doesn’t surprise me. At all!

As Debbie Weil (author of the The Corporate Blogging Book) rightly notes, a lot of this is down to ”too many corporate blogs being written in corporate speak”.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently and was complaining that too many web writers forget to be human yesterday.

Corporate blogs need to quit the cheese
As social media matures, corporates have got to ditch the cheese. Readers spot advertising fluff a mile away – even if it’s written in the form of a blog post.

If you’re a business blogger, you’ve got to speak to your audience as a human. You wouldn’t appreciate it if you stepped into a local store and the salesperson hit you with corporate speak.

You’re more inclined to buy or listen to what sales staff have to say if they speak to you as a person, rather than churning out corporate jargon.

Blogging changed the way we write on the Net. Twitter (and other microblogging services) are changing it even more.

We aren’t writing anymore. We’re speaking in text.

If business bloggers are going to start winning over audiences, they have to put the user at the forefront and start communicating in ways that people listen.

Time for a new corporate blogging voice
Plugging your sales pitch or corporate message into your website isn’t working. Nowadays you have to be more like the village shop keeper who cared about customers, forty or fifty years ago. Talk to people:

• be engaging
• establish trust
• don’t oversell
• be enthusiastic, not pushy
• and be polite and helpful.

Then, only then, will your blog cease to reverberate with the corporate claptrap customers are so wary of.

Web Writing 101: Be natural, polite and human

When you write web copy, remember you’re talking to people. Not corporations.

It’s people that act, make decisions, choose to purchase from your company and so on. No matter how big a company they work for.

Nowadays, corporate copy is a major turnoff.

XXXXXXX is an industry-leader in the innovative utilisation of XXXXXXX, strategically leveraging a unique value proposition to uphold its position as the world-class XXXXX solutions provider with unmatched, seamlessly integrated and robust best practice.

Compare that claptrap to Flickr.

This is one of my favourite examples of great web writing from a company. It’s the response they gave after they upset a lot of users by adding video to the popular picture-share site.

The way Flickr chose to tackle the issue and talk directly to users tells you a lot about what kind of company they are. It certainly tells me they a company that value the way they communicate. They’re talking in a natural, polite way that comes across as entirely human.

Even if “Heather” didn’t write this and it’s crafted by a professional copywriter (I’m speculating here!), the communicative act itself is exceptional.

First and foremost, they write with personality. Even when criticised for getting some of the copy on the site wrong (See smiley face) they respond in in a human way:

Yup. This is stupid. We’re working on fixing this.

I think we’re getting to the stage where businesses need to start speaking to customers on the web as person to person, not corporation to customer.

Blog Copy: Use Keywords to Grow Your Business Site

Image: msabramo

Run a small business? Not getting enough traffic to your website? If you want more people to find you on the Net you have to make sure Google and other search engines can find you.

One of the ways to lock more visitors to your website is to use relevant ‘keywords’ in your writing.

Keywords, are the names of places, people, products, companies, events, etc., and phrases, that best reflect what you do or or sell.

For example: as a digital copywriter based in Stockholm I target phrases like “Engelsk copywriter”, “English copywriter in Stockholm” or “blog copy” from time to time.

My good friends Donna and Jon Saunders, who sell beautiful basset hound puppies in the UK, have a very high-ranking kennel website because their site is so well optimised for basset keywords and phrases.

Kick Ass Copy Doesn’t have to be Hot and Sweaty

If you’re really desperate to get traffic to your website via Google, you might try and spin your copy to include globally popular keyword phrases like “Angelina Jolie naked”, for instance, but this doesn’t really help bring you visitors looking for, say, translation services, ExpressionEngine templates or whatever it is you’re trying to sell.

Use similar or related phrases and synonyms of your keywords

A better blog-building strategy is to fill your web copy with words and phrases similar to the words you are targeting. Google seems to really like this and helps you rank better for your key words. But a word of warning.

Don’t cram the same keywords again and again into your copy. This won’t get you anywhere.

Instead: think about what people are going to type into a Google search .
If you can do this, and craft your words carefully, anticipating what people will search for, you’ll soon find that your audience goes.

A good way to learn about the keywords that bring people to your site is ask Google to help you. The Google Adwords tool is a very good, free place to get ideas about keywords.

It can be a real revelation to discover that a lot of people search for, say, ”crisis management slogans”.

By regularly updating your blog, providing useful and meaningful content and targeting keywords and phrases related to the products or services that are unique to your company, you’ll slowly but surely generate more traffic to your webiste.

Amidst an economic downturn, growing traffic to your website could be the difference between success or failure. 

Small Business Blog Copy: Write for an audience

Image: Craig Stephen

The most engaging blogs speak to their audience in a casual and conversational tone. There’s something about a unique voice that appeals and hooks you into the text.

From the point of view of small businesses, a well-written personal corporate blog that’s candid and straightforward, can be a great way of showing potential customers who you are.

If it’s just you in the company, don’t hide behind “we” or the name of the company ("at BRIGHT NEW COMPANY”...etc). Make sure YOU are visible. People commission business from other people and your unique skills and personality might just be what helps you nail a sale.

Big Hint

If you’re a small business blogger, write your blog in a tone that is accessible and friendly. The best business blogs speak to their audience as if they were talking face to face. And the personal is important because it is almost always what attracts people and keeps them coming back to your blog.

Just because you write with personality and address your audience, nonetheless, there are things you can do to improve your copy. For starters you can cut down on some of the “I”.

Compare:

“I think that corporate blogging is here to stay whether we like it or not”

vs

“Corporate blogging is here to stay whether we like it or not”.

Both sentences can be understood as being the opinion of the writer; the former, however, is slightly more long-winded and lacks the punch of the latter.

I blog, therefore I am

Another great way of engaging your audience is to tell stories.

Stories are a fundamental part of the way we use language. The stories you tell about the products, services, people, challenges, and incidents that make your company or organization unique will involve your reader and make your business seem alive, different from many other corporations out there trying to use the Internet to market their business.

In short, think of your company blog as like a business biography – that comes alive as you personalize and illustrate it with your unique thoughts and perspective.

Online Presentations and Branding

“Hiding content on a multi-slide file and expecting people to click through it to get to your oh so important message is just dumb,” says Wedge.

Although I hear what he’s saying I’m not so dismissive. You can achieve quite a lot with a well-constructed presentation distributed on services like SlideShare.

Google Juice and SEO
The great thing about SlideShare is that Google seems to rank it very highly. You can achieve good placement in search results with a well-phrased title and keyword tags. Experience has shown me that you can use it to improve a client’s visibility on the Net. A high-ranking presentation in Google can be a great stepping stone to drive traffic to a business’s website.

Online CVs and Personal Branding
Another reason to use a slide presentation is that it can be a very useful way to demonstrate that you’re a good storyteller.

Storytelling is part of today’s corporate culture and if you have those skills, you want to make them visible to customers and clients as well as, say, potential employers.

Rather than telling someone you’re a good presenter or storyteller, include a link on your online resumé or weblog and show them what you can do first hand.

Finally, a quality online slide-presentation can win you a new audience.

I’ve never heard Valeria Maltoni speak but her presentation on Career Development, Social Media and Branding was enough to get me to subscribe to her RSS feed earlier this morning. Succinct and informative, her presentation told me enough to know that this was a voice I needed to follow.

Update:
A screen shot just a few hours after posting this entry and a PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare. Don’t underestimate the power of online presentations!

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