Week 9: How personal can I be on my business blog?

For Green Brew Engineering, I think I can be very personal in the blog.  This is due to the fact that it is a small company based largely on expertise.  We are selling a specialized service provided by a person who has particular knowledge about that service.  Hosting a blog under the name of the head of the company – the expert – seems very appropriate and will be a way to demonstrate that knowledge and expertise.  I also think it can be appropriate to have guest blogs from other people in the company on relevant issues in which they are experts, and to host guest blogs by experts in related topics.  For instance, while Chris might be the brewery systems engineering expert, we may have guest bloggers talk about environmentally friendly distribution practices, or sustainable hops farming, etc.  These guests would also typically have an individual attached rather than just a company.

It makes sense to add personality to a post when there is a person or there are multiple people in the company who you want users to be acquainted with or who users might be interested in.  These don’t even necessarily have to be real people – you could create blogging personas as well, like a cartoon for a kids blog or a puppy for a pets blog.  For me, things have gotten tricky in previous jobs when certain people within a company have an established blog voice and some content comes along which doesn’t fit well into their established voice or they don’t want to have to review everything going out or they only want their personality applied to a certain level of content.  In those cases instead of posting material from someone like “Jake the intern,” and “Sarah the communications director,” they’d put it out just under the name of the company.  It has the quality of a news release when it comes from a company rather than an engaging or particularly social quality.  Sometimes that’s ok.  Working for the government, there can also be sensitivities or even policies regarding who says what that can make things difficult. 

I have noticed though that on facebook in particular, often the blogs will be posted with just a photo and a headline, and you don’t know who wrote it until you check out the actual blog post.  That fact highlights that you don’t necessarily need to force your blogger’s personality into every social media piece you put out there, but a blog seems like a particularly relevant avenue to showcase that personality since the form is a little more robust than other social media avenues.