The Organization Blog

This blog is a little less about the person writing it than it is about the organization as a whole. Often there will be several writers who cover a range of topics and areas regarding the organization. It might be that different departments or division heads each write one blog post a week about news, events and interesting points relevant to their area.

In this style, it is more like local news and opinion coverage, with a little thought-leadership, than the more personal column style of the CEO or President’s blog.

There is more organization and focus needed here to make sure that there is a flow of subjects and that writers don’t duplicate efforts or put out conflicting information – which we all know can happen when there are multiple voices. Often, the communications team would act as the news editor and review all the information before it is posted to ensure that overall consistency in style and tone is reflected.

The Employee Blog

These can be the most engaging – if you have the right employee(s) writing the blog posts. It has been our experience that organizations have some incredible people working on the front lines who are great at blogging. It’s these people who have engaging, interesting, amazing stories that showcase the product or services that you offer – and the heart and soul of your organization: the people.

There are, of course, challenges here. Not everyone on the front lines understands what should and should not be shared publicly. Training and coaching can be helpful here. The other side of this is that sometimes, as communicators, we get caught up in positioning, messaging and talking points. Having someone who lives the brand every day write the blog posts can bring us back to a reality that is important. There are times when it’s okay to say things are challenging and when it’s okay to talk about an issue and how it was resolved. Most people want to know about the heart of an organization – not just what your product or service does for them. They want to know how you act when there is an issue; they want to know what the day is like for someone who works there – to understand the challenges that you face and how you deal with them.

The Blend

Some of the best blogs we’ve helped develop and maintain are the ones that bring the CEO and the employees into the spotlight. The CEO might blog on Fridays, while a team of employee bloggers rotate through the other days. Some of the most popular blog posts have been where employees interview the CEO or the CEO speaks with employees and finds out about their role in the company.

The blend blog style allows for some great human interaction that showcases the people behind the product or service, something we’re all interested in knowing more about.

Does your organization have a blog? Who writes it?

Like any communications tool, blogging isn’t for everyone. It depends on the objectives, goals, overall strategy and, of course, the resources. It takes time and effort to produce a relevant, interesting and informative blog post on a regular basis.

A blog provides an opportunity to share relevant news and information, to educate and inform, to provide opinions and context within an industry and to clarify and correct any misunderstandings or factual errors, which could come from rumours or speculation. A blog can prove valuable during an issue or a crisis; and while it would be a positive to already have one up and running so that you have already created a community that reads the blog, starting one to share information during a challenging time that can provide reliable communications is appreciated – and read.

Depending on what the objective is, there are different types and styles of blogs. And some are a blend. Today we’re going to outline the CEO or President’s blog.

The CEO or President’s Blog

Typically this positions your CEO or President in a thought-leadership position within an industry or field. It also provides the opportunity to show the “human” side of your leader. These types of blogs work best with a CEO or President who is comfortable in the spotlight, who actively participates within your industry, likes to share her/his thoughts, opinions and ideas and who appreciates interaction and feedback. There are those who believe the CEO or President should write their own blog and, in a perfect world, we agree. However, most leaders don’t have the time it takes to do this. We have found that the most authentic and realistic way for this type of blog to succeed is to have regular meetings (which can be on the phone while the CEO drives to work) where she/he downloads ideas and key points and the post gets written in their personal style. The CEO reviews it to make sure that their thoughts and ideas are reflected.

There is some discussion about the authenticity of this approach, but in our experience it’s similar to having someone write a speech. It has to reflect the CEO or President’s thoughts, ideas and style, but it can be written for them. We always recommend that in the about section of the blog that this is explained or defined.

Think of this blog as your CEO or President having a column that is produced two or three times a week.
On Monday, we’ll visit the organization blog, the employee blog and a blended blog.

Create an Editorial Schedule
Do you have a schedule of the content you will upload? A little forethought goes a long way when you are busy and need content or an idea in a hurry.

Here are some things to think about when developing an editorial schedule. What are the key areas of content that are valuable to your stakeholder group? Are there annual events or happenings that you can put in to the schedule? Ask stakeholders what they are interested in hearing about from you and add it to the schedule. Look at information you are using – do you have a media pitch or news release that you can repurpose? Do you have more information than you used from an interview with your CEO or another industry leader?

Ask for Assistance
We have worked with some clients to establish a content committee, an advisory board and we have also put out a call for volunteer content creators (establishing exactly how much of their work week can be put towards this task). Often there are individuals within your organization that have skills in this area that you don’t realize. Their positions might not have anything to do with writing, taking images or identifying good stories, but they are good at this. Asking for assistance isn’t a sign of weakness; it shows that you want to get others engaged and that you are interested in their areas/departments.

Think Like the Media
It is human nature to fall into writing material in a more promotional manner – it’s often a big part of our job. Take a step back and think like a magazine/newspaper editor/writer or broadcast producer. Moving into the role of content producer doesn’t mean you are going to air dirty laundry or talk about negatives; it means that you are going to create authentic, compelling content. It means creating content in an editorial style – a style that is balanced and has quotes that are substantial. The content could show the humanity, the challenges, the risks and the successes of your organization.

Change Up Your Words
We recently had a client that struggled with taking on an editorial approach. She was a good writer, but the content she was creating read like marketing material. Working with her, we developed a list of words that she agreed not to use; words like leading edge, exciting, innovative and world-class weren’t to be used. (Don’t get us wrong, we have nothing against these words in the proper context.) It was a bit of a challenge at first. She had a big case of writer’s block because she relied on these words. However, she had a breakthrough. Now her content is read by a large stakeholder group and it is regularly shared throughout the industry. It was a big step forward in building her organization’s brand.

Not everyone is ready to leap into social media full throttle, but it is important to start the process of listening. See what people in your industry/area of expertise are doing online. Pay attention to the conversations that are happening. It’s a good first step into connecting with your specific community.

Have a critical look at your website. We often get clients calling and asking for a social media strategy and when we start the discussion of why they want to engage in social media, we ask about their website. Quite often, their site is stagnant and hasn’t been touched in a very long time. Your website is an important component of your online brand. How up-to-date is it? How relevant is it? Is there a way to make the content more current on a regular basis?

When clients want to begin to use social media tools as a part of their overall communications outreach, we often recommend starting out small, one step at a time – with a focus on doing it right. Below we have outlined four small actions you can take over the next two weeks to begin to include social media in your day-to-day work.

1. Review your website. How many unique visitors do you have each day? How interactive is your site? How current is your site? How does your site compare to others in your industry? What could be done differently to encourage visitors to check out your site more often, stay longer or to take the next step and connect with you? (Econsultancy.com has a helpful post titled: Five easy ways to make your business website more social.)

2. Who are the five top bloggers in your area? Set up RSS feeds and read their blogs regularly.

3. Who from your industry is on Twitter? Use the search function on Twitter and find out who is talking about your business, industry, and area of expertise. Set up a Twitter account and follow them. Listen to what they have to say.

4. Is there someone in your office who is active online, who blogs or is on Twitter? Find out who this is and ask their advice. You might be surprised at who it is and how much you can learn from them.

The world of social media can seem overwhelming, but by taking small steps and learning about the culture, the technology and the people – it makes it easy to accomplish.

When I was at Maclean’s, I saw a great deal of “junk” come in from PR people. In fact, I once had a tire (yes, a full sized, real tire) delivered to me from a company that wanted me to cover their new winter tire sale. First of all, I was an entertainment reporter and not only was this not newsworthy, it had nothing to do with what I covered. Additionally, Maclean’s would never cover this kind of story and finally, what good was this tire to anyone? In my opinion, it was a waste of time, effort and it was not environmentally friendly. I wonder how many tires they delivered that day…

Our AHA blog is listed in Cision as an editorial product. (Cision is the largest and best media database out there – and the database that AHA subscribes to.) While that’s a nice little accolade to have, the downside to being listed in Cision is that we get all kinds of media pitches and news releases from people who have no idea that we are a PR firm, who don’t read this blog and who are clearly just spamming everyone on some database they have built.

We take our role as media relations specialists seriously. I never want to send something to a journalist or a blogger that is useless. And it really bothers me that people are sending out irrelevant news releases to the media. No wonder journalists and bloggers are cranky with PR people. When I see the useless stuff that comes to us, it makes me cranky. On top of that, I would bet that some of these same people are saying to their boss or client: “We have a database of 10,000 journalists and bloggers that we will share this news with.” That number means nothing if the news isn’t a) newsworthy and b) relevant to that journalist or blogger. It’s better to have three people on your database that might be interested in your story than 5,000 who see you as a spammer.

This isn’t rocket science; it’s common sense. Think about the media you are reaching out to and why this news will be relevant to them and their readers or audience. Take some time and do it right. You will generate more coverage and you will stop giving good PR people who actually put some thought into media relations a bad name!

A blog gives you the opportunity to connect with your organization’s stakeholders. It allows you to provide valuable, relevant information to people. It can help, depending on the writing style and the content, show the “human” side of your organization. All are important components of your brand and how your organization interacts with your community.

Our AHA blog is currently under review by our crew. We are committed to our blog and find that it provides great value to our community. Our objective with this blog is to provide interesting, relevant, useful information that focuses on communication – both traditional and social media – for our stakeholder group. Readers who may potentially be clients, contractors or partners see who we are, our expertise, skill sets and experience and they understand our approach to business. Having said that, we have written this blog for several years and it’s time for us to see what we are doing well, what we could do better and what we need to drop or add to stay current and relevant to our readers.

I came across a good post on Ragan.com about how to use stats to make your blog a must-read and I found it valuable. I hope you do too.

A Haka for AHA from AHA Creative on Vimeo.

We’re enjoying our time in New Zealand working on the social media project for Tourism New Zealand. In our travels, we spent some time with the New Zealand Sports Academy. The students at the rugby school performed a haka in our honour.

Blogs, like this one, have a little bit of leeway because it is written in a more conversational manner. (It would still bother me if there was a typo or other error in this blog.) Anything that is shared internally or externally should be reviewed. Here at our Vancouver PR agency, we have an editing and proofing process that we strictly follow. The input of the crew is important and each person is encouraged to question not just the information presented, but the style, tone and the word structure and grammar. It isn’t always easy or comfortable to do this, but it is important.

I recently came across a great piece on Ragan.com that focuses on how to identify and eliminate redundancy from your writing. It’s worth a read.

The range of skill sets outlined here is varied and necessary. This is one of the reasons that we have been so successful at our Vancouver PR agency – we have a team of exceptionally bright, talented people that provide these skills for clients. Not every client needs all of the skill sets. We build our client team based on their needs and objectives.

Not all blogs are alike. For example, we rarely get comments on our blog here at AHA, but we have a strong number of people that read our AHA blog post every day. The objectives of our blog are to share some valuable information, to engage with stakeholders, to showcase our knowledge and the AHA culture, and to help those interested in working with a PR agency find us.

We review our objectives on a regular basis to make sure our blog posts are supporting our goals.

For many organizations, a blog provides an opportunity to showcase the people behind the brand, to engage and connect with stakeholders and to further explain ideas, services and products in a non-commercial way. While attention spans are shorter these days, you can still say a lot in two to four paragraphs and if someone is interested (and you have provided engaging, valuable content), they’ll read it.

Producing a good blog takes time and effort. The content needs to flow; it needs to be informative, relevant and interesting. A good blog isn’t about you; it’s about your readers and providing them with what they want to know from your organization.

At our Vancouver PR agency, we often work with clients to review their current communications vehicles – to see what’s working and what’s not. We develop blog policies and processes, which includes editorial schedules (especially if there is more than one blogger) and we assist clients in reaching out and building a community that engages through the blog. Understanding the blog community is at the heart of it all. Knowing what conversations are important to your stakeholders is key. It is where it all begins.

I recently read a great piece in Inc.com on blogging mistakes that small businesses make. I think this piece translates to any organization that wants to or is blogging. It’s worth a read.