john {WEB}ster

Are we at the beginning of the end for bosses that blog as client outreach? A recent report seems to think so. “Blogs read like tired, warmed-over press releases,” said Laura Ramos in a recent interview. “Corporate bloggers [just] yak away about their companies and products.” eeewwww.

What’s the beef with the B2B or B2E (Boss to Employee) blog? They’re too corporate. You see many of these bloggers fail to realize that good blogging style should resemble a casual conversation, not a whitepaper. The attitude should encourage feedback, resulting in a better relationship with the audience.

The person blogging from the corner office should try learning from those who are getting it right. Here are some tips adapted from John Dragoon, CMO at Novell, who has built a wonderful blogging personality.

When I first saw banner ads marketing Twitter — A little “tool” for instantly broadcasting a play-by-play recap of your day, while the trivial dribbles of others — I simply could not imagine a bigger waste of time! Another way to lower the productivity of an office! Just more nonsense traveling across the net!

I ASKED MYSELF — Why would anyone care about what I ate for breakfast, what I was working on or where I was headed in my day? Why would a business person add more noise to the signal to noise ratio?

I SAID SELF — maybe Twitter is the unavoidable conclusion for an A.D.D. culture forced to short attention by an overwhelming amount of data, fascinated by fame and fed a diet of sound bites.

I CHUCKLED TO MYSELF AND SAID — Well, as is often the case, Twitter is not the end of the world as we know it; it may in fact be a peek into the future of communication and marketing. At its nucleus, Twitter is just a communication tool. Like the Web, and phone and the telegraph before it, it’s just a tool to let us connect with each other.

It’s very common on the Internet today to find Websites that don’t sell. How can this be?

While working with many small and medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations, almost all of which have Websites, we have found many making the same 5 fundamental mistakes with their sites. what’s even more interesting, when we look at their media marketing, print advertising and collateral materials, we find those same mistakes

Just what mistakes are we talking about

• NOT reinforcing the initial marketing message
• NOT reinforcing the product, service or organization’s benefits
• NOT capturing visitor information
• NOT focusing on the needs of the visitor
• NOT using proven visitor conversion techniques

There could many of reasons why your site may or may not be measuring up the results you have anticipated. But, if you can solve the above five mistakes alone, your results will change dramatically. Instead of flat line or downward marketing program, you’ll see your qualified leads grow, sales increase, and your marketing budget go farther than ever before.