Should You Blog Corporate?

Not very good English I know, but the question is, should you write like a “corporate” if you’re a business blogger whose main clients are corporations?

Well, I do have an opinion but I will preface it with this …

“You have to feel comfortable with your writing style or else, the fake you will show up somewhere in your dealings with your corporate clients.”

My attitude is very much that the very reason large organisations like IBM, Microsoft etc jumped onto the blogging bandwagon was because they wanted to humanise their interactions with their potential customers.

Now, I appreciate that they are dealing with people on a business to consumer level, so many will argue that there is good reason for them not using long protracted sentences, but my arguement is that “individuals” in organisations are reading your blog posts, NOT the corporation.

When clients who are working on a business to business level ask me about their writing style, I usually send them over to Tom Peter’s blog so they can take a look at the topics he writes about, how he writes and, to check out some of the photos he has on his site.  At the time of writing this blog post, he has some ”groovy” pictures in the header.

Recently when I directed one of my clients to Tom Peters site to check out his writing style, their immediate response was “he’s Tom Peters for goodness sakes!”

But in my view, that’s the whole point … his blog is readable, executives can go muse his blog posts without feeling they’re preparing for their 5-year plan review meeting and, he gets booked.

I mentioned the success of one of my clients blog in a previous post and he doesn’t use corporate speak in his blog posts, but still he gets booked.

And, I know from personal experience that if the executives at the company I was employed some years ago were to receive some of the blog posts I see some business bloggers publishing, it would end up in the bin and I’m talking about the largest UK car insurer at the time … no small company.

I’m not suggesting you exclude elegance in your blog posts, but the truth is (and I pray none of the executive from my previous company are reading this right now), if you give your blog post to a 12 year old and they struggle to understand what on earth you’re talking about, your blog posts will go over the heads of 50% plus of those in the boardroom.

Oops!  There, I’ve said it! 

It’s not that they’re thick but not all of them had the privilege of attending Oxford or Cambridge University or, fell in love with the dictionary.  Most of them were promoted because they got results and it doesn’t require a literary degree to do that.

So, this is my two pennies worth but hey, I’d love to hear from you if you were rejected by a corporate company for not writing intellectually enough, in your blogs.

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