Corporate blogging (lesson 3)
As you probably do not know I work for a large Suisse bank in which I implement an Intranet built around a blog. The goal is to communicate with the staff in a more informal and direct way so they feel part of a huge change (a new banking system) that will impact the whole company in a few months. I am trying to document what I am learning on this project on this blog.
The first two weeks the editorial team wrote five posts. Five. That really isn’t a lot and the audience immediately reacted: visits were going down. From the point of view of the readers it is completely normal. Imagine that you arrive on a site you think is very alive but nothing changed since your last visit. Perhaps you will return (in a long time) but if you do not find anything new again you will erase the URL of your memory.
This dynamic, which is an old truth of the Web, has to be moderated when it comes to blogs.
With blogs you have a second chance.
There is a life after the first impression. As soon as content started to flow more frequently people responded and visits went up again. I think that it comes from the fact that in the world of the blogs, the post is the central piece of content. Not the site. So people get disappointed by your post, not your site.
In the “applicative” or “flat” web this luxury does not exist. It is mandatory to make a good impression during the first visit or the site is done. To reconquer an audience that deserted it will be necessary to change the service and make an intense promotional effort because one never returns for the same thing, and the only way of changing is to create a new service. On blogs, content is the service, so the service is easier to improve.
More on this matter:
Lesson 2: The audience is ready. Editors are not
Lesson 1: Content will make the difference
