Sometimes It’s Better Not To Blog At All
December 17th, 2007 — admin
In theory, having a blog that focuses on a high-profile local business makes sense, particularly if you’re a newspaper. You should have a better sense of the company than even the best-funded outsider, and if the business is big enough, there’s an audience for the blog that can be worldwide.
The downside is that sales pressures will make it difficult to do a good job with the blog. If the target company is a big advertiser, it’s nearly impossible to argue that the blog is important enough to risk alienating all that potential income.
But if that’s a concern, then you should really just walk away from the idea. Don’t try and dance around the conflict and do a blog that attempts to cover the business in a way that won’t annoy anyone at the company. Because you’ll end up with a blog that reads more like a promotional brochure than a work of journalism.
For an example of that approach, take a look at the “On Target” blog at TwinCities.com.
TwinCities.com is the home of the St. Paul, MN newspaper The Pioneer Press, and since Target is a very high-profile local company, doing a blog about it must have seemed to be a no-brainer. But the resulting blog is soft and mushy to the point of being the journalistic equivalent of someone blogging about their cat. Sure, there are small nuggets of information. But you have to wade through a lot of cute to get to it.
Take for instance, this sadly typical entry:
Target’s getting kudos for a designer collection on the way. Too bad the Loeffler Randall brand, best known for ballerina flats and satchels for the “chic, modern girl,” won’t be in stores until after Christmas.According to InStyle magazine’s November issue: “Budget-price stores are still lassoing designer talent for limited-edition lines. Arriving this month at H&M is a capsule collection of sensuous designs by Roberto Cavalli. Target, meanwhile, has teamed with New York City maestros Loeffler Randall for a spiffy new accessories line that arrives December 30.”
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Truly, sometimes it’s better not to blog at all than to do something that makes everyone cringe.
