Having a blog for your business is a great way to communicate with your audience, and it’s also a great way to give your business a more “human” element. Within the context of your company blog, you can share all kinds of useful or even just entertaining posts. Some business blogs, however, are more focused and company-oriented than others.
How on-topic your blog needs to be depends a lot on the nature of your business, as well as your branding strategy. If the tone of your other communications is friendly and informal, then you can probably get away with a more conversational blog, with a bit of leeway on topics. On the other hand, if your brand’s tone is serious and factual, then it doesn’t make sense for your blog to be casual and chatty, and you’ll probably want to keep things more on-topic.
The size of your business also makes a difference. In a large corporate environment, it’s generally expected that your blog will mostly feature posts that are on-topic for your business. If you work alone or have only a small office with a few employees, then your audience may want to get to know you a little better. It might be nice, from time to time, to use your blog as a way to let customers and potential customers see part of your personality, or the dynamic in your office.
Be careful, however, about letting off-topic posts take over your blog, and keep an eye on just how off-topic you’re getting. You might love cute kitten videos on YouTube, but posting them every day on your company blog might get to be a bit too much, unless your business is pet supplies. Use your personal social media accounts (not your company ones!) to share the cute videos; use your business blog for more business-related topics, with perhaps the occasional off-topic or tangential post thrown in.
If you’re worried about being able to come up with enough relevant blog topics, keep in mind that you don’t need to post to your blog every day, and in fact that can get tiring for your audience if the range of topics is all over the place. As long as you’re coming up with a few strong posts a month, perhaps one or two per week, that will be enough to keep your audience engaged and reminded of who you are and what your business is about.
