When you recruit an employee or hire a professional blogger to write your business blog for your company, you have to give up some control of the content that is published. Let’s face it — there is no point in having someone else write your business blog posts for you if you’re still going to take the time to rewrite them in your own words. With that in mind, you should create a set of written blogger guidelines that provide the important rules you expect your business blogger to follow while writing for you.
Following are 5 commonly used business blogging guidelines to get you started in creating your own list:
1. Ask permission before publishing customer names and stories.
Your business blogger should not publish individual customers’ names or stories related to them without obtaining written permission to do so in order to respect their privacy.
2. Don’t attack competitors.
While it’s certainly fine to discuss how your business is different from competitors and the added benefits you deliver to consumers, you don’t want to publish overtly negative comments and posts about your competitors. Not only does it open your business up for a counter-attack, but it also hurts your business and brand to be associated with those types of conversations.
3. Take individual conversations, problems, or questions offline.
A business blog can serve as a broad customer relations tool, but it should not become a one-on-one customer service destination. Keep customer service-related conversations broad, meaning they appeal to a wide audience, and take specific customer service dialogue about individual customers’ issues offline.
4. Balance personality with professionalism.
A blog should be infused with the blogger’s personality but that personality must merge seamlessly with the business’ brand image and promise. Your business blogger should be allowed to let his or her personality shine through their posts and comments, but that personality should compliment the brand, else you run the risk of confusing or offending your audience and customers.
5. Stay on topic.
While a personal blog can stray from the core topic, a business blog has less flexibility in this area. Just as customers have expectations for a brand and they become loyal to a brand that consistently meets those expectations, they develop expectations for a business blog. Don’t stray too far from what your audience demonstrates that they want, need and expect from your business, brand and blog.
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