Managerial discussion board

Let's look more closely at blogging this week. Using your imaginary companies from last week, please talk about how you would incorporate a blog, using the 3-step process on p. 203.

The three-step writing process is easy to adapt to blogging tasks. The planning step is particularly important if you're considering starting a blog, because you're planning an entire communication channel, not just a single message. Pay close attention to your audience, your purpose, and your scope:

· Audience. Except with team blogs and other efforts that have an obvious and well-defined audience, defining the target audience for a blog can be challenging. You want an audience large enough to justify the time you'll be investing but narrow enough that you can provide a clear focus. For instance, if you work for a firm that develops computer games, would you focus your blog on "hardcore" players, the types who spend thousands of dollars on super-fast PCs optimized for video games, or would you broaden the reach to include all video gamers? The decision often comes down to business strategy.

Before you launch a blog, make sure you have a clear understanding of your target audience, the purpose of your blog, and the scope of subjects you plan to cover.

· Purpose. A business blog needs to have a business-related purpose that is important to your company and to your chosen audience. Moreover, the purpose has to "have legs"-that is, it needs to be something that can drive the blog's content for months or years.

· Scope. Defining the scope of your blog can be a bit tricky. You want to cover a subject area that is broad enough to offer discussion possibilities for months or years but narrow enough to have an identifiable focus. With a clear purpose in mind, you'll have a better idea of how wide or narrow your subject can be.

Use a comfortable, personal writing style. Blog audiences don't want to hear from your company; they want to hear from you. Bear in mind, though, that comfortable does not mean careless. Sloppy writing damages your credibility. Successful blog content also needs to be interesting, valuable to readers, and as brief as possible.49 In addition, although audiences expect you to be knowledgeable in the subject area your blog covers, you don't need to know everything about a topic. If you don't have all the information yourself, provide links to other blogs and websites that supply relevant information. In fact, content curation (see page 193) is one of the most valuable aspects of blogging.

My imaginary company is called Evans Medical Friends. There are many people across the United States with medical needs that prefer to be taken care of in the privacy of their own home. We have a network of doctors, nurses, sitters, and just about any medical practitioner you could think of to make house calls.