The second key to starting a great conversation and a great relationship is this:
Be friendly. And human. With blogs, it's simple to get this across. For the sake of this post, I'll use the example of Compendium Blogware. We have 15 people who contribute content to our corporate blogging program. Each person has his or her own blog. At the top of each person's blog is a photo and a little bit of content about the blogger. Go ahead and check out some of our other employee blogs here. Click on the name of the author below the title of each post, and you'll appear on the blogger's individual blog.
What you'll notice is that even though we're talking about a lot of the same topics, we're talking about them in a different way, in a different tone, and with an authentic voice. That's because the content is being written by different people, not by one person in a marketing department. When you read these blogs, our hope is that feel like you're talking to one of us over a cup of coffee; that our smiling faces show you we're here to help. At the same time, our blogging administrator has a way to check over content before it goes live - to make sure that each and every person, no matter their take on a certain topic, is representing the company in the right way.
That's one of the most powerful aspects of blogging software like Compendium: the technology is easy to use, you have the safety net of an administrative level, and therefore, you can get lots of people involved in order to show the human side of your organization to everyone who finds you.
