A good corporate blog is both passionate and authoritative.
This tip is about how to demonstrate your passion for a topic.
How do you show your passion? Post often.
How often?
That'll depend on a variety of things. How much competition do you have? What kind of audience are you trying to build?
But, as we look at our lists of favorite blogs we notice a trend. Most of the ones we look at every day post every day. Boing Boing. Slashdot. Dave Winer. Blogs.msdn.com. Steve Rubel. Misbehaving. Gaping Void.
That doesn't mean you need to post every day, though. It's quite possible that posting twice a week will be enough for you.
But, don't follow this rule blindly. One of Microsoft's most popular bloggers (at least he was until he stopped posting in 2004) was Christopher Brumme. His blog isn't one that many normal people would read. He works on the .NET Common Language Runtime team. Translation: he's extremely technical. He would post only once every month or so and his posts were 11,000 words long.
In other words, he broke all the rules. And, yet, he still was very popular with the audience he wanted to reach: other software developers.
But, he didn't have much competition. There are only a handful of people who are as technical as Christopher is and none who write about the inards of .NET. So, he can get away with posting infrequently.
Which brings us to tip #5: demonstrate your authority.
Hey, if you're the world's top authority on compilers, all you have to do is write 11,000 word posts that show people how to use yours.
If you're a plumber, show off how to do plumbing. If you're an automaker, demonstrate that you know something about making autos.
That isn't as easy as it sounds, but start with showing us how it's done. Look at the English Cut blog. http://www.englishcut.com/
It is a blog by a company that makes suits. It is very authoritative. Has pictures. Demonstrates that they know what they are doing.
They also had influential people that already had an audience link to the blog and vouch for its authority.
Getting someone who is trusted to link to you brings all sorts of benefits. For instance, one of the guys I really trust is Doc Searls. I've been reading him for years and he's never abused that trust.
So, if he links to something and says it's great stuff, I trust him and confer that trust and authority onto the site he's linking to.
Get five people I trust to link to a new site and you have a home run. You might be able to fool one guy, but it's very hard to fool five.
How do you demonstrate passion and authority on your blog?
