Business blogging.
In October, on cvillenews.com, I encouraged local businessfolk to take to blogging. I think this might have been a mistake.
Several Charlottesville businesses have taken to blogging in the past few weeks whose blogs are just terrible. Others started out promising, but turned out to be lame. These blogs are nothing more but serially-posted advertisements. Nobody wants to read these things. They’re badly written puffery that offer no insight to readers and no honest assessments of the business, the industry, or its products. They’re boring.
Now, if a business wants to run a crappy blog, I figure that’s their business. But since I run the Charlottesville blog aggregator, this puts me in an awkward position. I’ve included every area blog submitted since I started the aggregator last year, because there’s been no reason not to. Now I need to start acting as an editor, deciding what does or doesn’t qualify as a decent blog. What a pain in the ass.
So this is my plea. If you’re running a business blog and it sucks, stop it from sucking. If you’re considering starting a business blog, ask yourself if anybody really wants to read today’s price list or your marketing-speak.
Sean Tubbs and I will be addressing the Central Virginia chapter of the American Marketing Association on this topic next month. I hope that any Charlottesville business owner considering blogging will attend.
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