At the moment I am quite busy working on a comprehensive concept for a client-blog of Holtzbrinck eLAB which is supposed to go live soon. And I can tell it is a huge advantage that I have been doing blogging for quite some time myself. From the experience, my key learnings for putting together a blog for a client summarized in six bullet points:
• Less is more. A blog is like a monster which once created needs constantly get fed. So start frugal with much more content in the backlog so that you don’t run into the trap of declining postings both in quality and quantity once the initial enthusiasm has evaporated.
• Build a roadmap: There are so many cool and exciting features you can integrate in your mostly vertical structure left and right of the content, but usually you will only need a few important assets: latest postings, full-test search and categories. Ideally, take the effort to write together what you would like to have and treat your blog like a perpetual beta: Better get started soon, get a hands-on experience and incrementally add bells and whistles: Flickr picture inte-gration, blogroll, Rollyo shared links etc.
• Define your content vision: You certainly have an idea what you are going to publish. Define purposeful categories which will help you in the first place classify the content for your users, and in the second place remind you what you actually intended to cover. But feel free, no better feel obliged, to re-think your concept from time to time.
• Keep a nice mix: Especially for a corporate blogs, the angles to cover interesting topics seem almost limitless. Try to identify the key topics, possible authors and set up some intervals for a purposeful “editorial structure” so that you don’t build a “hangover” towards one direction. Moreover, don’t drop the guard for the ease of too many quick & dirty postings which a low generic creative impact.
• Blogs are conversations: Identify the key bloggers in the domain you are targeting, read their blogs on a regular bases and make their content part of your own postings by referring and extending your thoughts. Also be prepared to react quickly to comments where taking a stance is required. That’s something, no editorial planning will be able to cover.
I will keep you updated when the blog is going live.
Feeds