A friend of mine, Erik Deckers, once told me that the average reader of the Internet reads and comprehends at a 6th grade level. Erik is a professional writer and marketer worth listening to. Ever since Erik told me that, I've toned down my 8th grade writing.
All joking aside, it's an important thing to keep in mind when you're explaining products or services on your corporate blog. Don't overestimate the knowledge-level of your visitors.
It's not that you want to dumb down the content of your blog, it's that you want to make sure that you thoroughly explain your post as if you were explaining it to a 6th grader.
All businesses solve a problem - whether you're an Infrastructure as a Service company dealing with virtualization, a gourmet cookie company that sells cookies, baskets and more, or a real estate company serving Southern Indiana and Kentucky.
If any of the products or services those companies provided were easy, they wouldn't be in business. Businesses help make difficult tasks simpler. Compendium is a great example - we make enterprise corporate blogging easier for companies seeking greater organic search results.
Our business blogs and yours should reflect this! When you're speaking to the audience that's visiting your site, your blog posts should be simple to read, drawing in the person that's got a difficult problem that you solve. If the visitor needs a dictionary by their side to read your posts - you're going to lose them.
It's not difficult to take a complex topic and write it in simpler terms. Writing at a 6th grade level also doesn't make you sound less intelligent. I would argue that a blogger's ability to write about a technical topic and explain it as a sixth grader is an very talented and intelligent writer.
To promote your ability to answer a difficult problem easily, you should be writing at a level that represents that. Don't overestimate your audience.
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