Corporate Blogging

Yesterday Compendium exhibited at the

TechPoint Summit here in Indianapolis, and I had the pleasure of taking part in an "early stage marketing" panel since Chris is out of town.

The panel was one of the best I've been on, and I think it's because all of the participants (ExactTarget, Canteloupe, and Compendium) were equally unprepared. We didn't have slides, we didn't have agendas, and we let the audience gear us toward topics they cared about rather than us spouting off a bunch of gibberish that no one pays attention to.

In other words, we let the session evolve. We didn't plan. We jumped in and adjusted as needed.

And guess what? That same approach can be taken with any kind of online marketing initiative, including business blogging.

You can do all of the research in the world and spend thousands of dollars on a new website, but as most of us have learned the hard way, the message that we think is going to strike a chord when we start a business ends up being drastically different a few months later.

Sure, corporate blogs are a way to help get found in organic search and humanize your marketing, but story telling is still a fundamental part. Good stories engage us and make us want to learn more. And good stories get better over time. They become funnier and more interesting...ever played the game telephone? Try to think of a time that you haven't laughed at the end of it, or at least been mildy entertained.

So before you spend too much time writing and rewriting a company blog policy, or investigating every blog software review available, consider the fact that a corporate blogging program can grow and evolve with you over time, as the most interesting things in life tend to do.