Five reasons why you have a crappy blog

Stop promoting yourself and start posting valuable information for readers

You’ve been blogging for your company for a while now, but the effort is going nowhere. You have little traffic, and other than the time you replied to your own post, you’ve never gotten a single comment. You feel betrayed for buying into the hype about blogging and social media and are convinced that it’s all a bunch of overblown crap.

Of course you could simply have a crappy blog. Let’s find out. Here are five signs that your company blog sucks:

1. You use your blog as a billboard. Billboards are pretty and everyone loves them … in Times Square. Don’t use your blog as a tool to promote yourself; use it as a tool to create value for your readers. Tap into why your customers buy your products and want to interact with your company. Patagonia does a good job of this by having The Cleanest Line focus on environmental issues and activism, instead of their products.

And the payoff? If you position your blog properly as a tool to create value for your readers, they will promote your blog to others. Then your blog ultimately does become a promotional tool for your company.