Pull to refresh

Common mistakes in corporate blogs

We all live for the first time and make mistakes, choose the wrong ways. But, as they say, smart learn from other people's mistakes, stupid ones - on their own. So remember:

  • Periodicity of publications
    There were companies that wrote 3–4 publications a day. The key word is "were", as the quality of publications grew into a number and users noticed this - they had no choice but to include a "protective mechanism" in the form of downvoting publications of the company. Practice shows that only really big companies, with a huge number of departments, information guides and authors can write that often — Google, Microsoft, Yandex, Mail.Ru and others. If your company does not belong to such giants, try not to do more than one publication per day. The optimal pace is 2–3 publications a week. At the same time, very rare publications (one per month) - not a mistake, but the blog in this case will be used less efficiently.

  • Incompetent author
    Blogging on the Habr should not be done by a receptionist - this should be done by a person who understands what Habr is. And also the differences in the publishing on Habr from its publishing, for example, on "LJ". Throwing blog on one employee is also wrong way - most likely, he just can not write for a long time oftenly, interestingly and at a good technical level. The best option is team work, when each employee is responsible for a specific topic or type of the publication.

    All technical details of each publication should be written by a competent (in the publication subject) employee of the company, who, if necessary, will be able to answer questions from users. In this case, not every "technician" can write fully finished material - the finalization of the material to the final state is better be delegated to the content manager, correcting errors - corrector, and preparing illustrations - for example, the designer. If your company has a need for such assistance, let us know.

  • Non-standard way of writing text
    If you…

    • Put the smiley after each sentence :) or even inside the sentence)))

    • Write. Very. Short. Sentences.

    • Or vice versa, very long sentences — so long so that during the reading of the sentence, any average user of the site loses the thread of your narration and forgets what it was about at the beginning of the sentence, or loses reading space due to a random scroll of your text while reading somewhere in the bus or in any other public transport.

    • You abuse slang and do not put cut in longreads.

    • Use unknown (or understandable only to you) abbreviations with no decoding.

    • Wildly familiar or way too official.

    • Make a lot of grammar mistakes;


    ...then, most likely, you will be told about it in the first comment, and the focus of further discussions may shift to where you did not plan. Or they will insult you and downvote your publication - anything can happen. Therefore, the advice is simple: pay attention to how to do it, and how - not. Do not be shy before posting to show your publication to colleagues in order to get criticism - maybe they will offer useful edits (add/fix/remove).

  • Forgot about John
    Sometimes collective work has side effects, which can also negatively affect the final result. For example, someone from the staff writes material and leaves in the note like "check this information with John", "do not forget to hang up an advertising link here," "decipher the abbreviation for the dumb" or "there will be an incredible beauty screenshot". And then, the person, who places material on the site, simply copies without looking at all the text and inserts it into the form of writing the publication. Just one such phrase can spoil the whole publication or even the attitude to the company as a whole. Therefore, when preparing a publication, there is a well-known proverb: seven times measure — one cut.

  • No cover image
    Also known as Picture to Attract Attention. If the publication does not have such a picture, then in the site's feed (and in social networks) it will be a small inconspicuous record that everyone will accidentally miss.

    Approach the choice of a picture in the advertising part of the publication as responsibly as possible: it should not be very large (to fit on one screen together with the title and introductory text) and on the topic of publication. Excellent are all sorts of memes, but inept and/or inappropriate usage (too frequent also) can play a cruel joke.

    Use only high-quality images - if there are JPEG-pictures of awful quality or screenshots on which you can not see anything, then you will be definitely noticed about it.

  • The text looks like advertising or full of links
    The audience of our projects is far from stupid and often knows how to read between the lines. Therefore, it is better not to fool and veil the advertising message of the publication, and openly write about your intentions - it will be more honest and effective. In everything, you need to know the measure - frankly advertising publications from time to time nobody will like. The same goes for the links in the text: if you insert ten links instead of one, but clicks from this will not increase.

  • No response to feedback from users or it is negative
    Many people like Habr for the fact that the project has hundreds of IT companies, with which users can communicate directly. If readers ask questions in the comments, they are waiting for them to respond to company representatives. Try to avoid answers in the spirit of "We passed your question to a specialist, he will respond soon" and negative answers to users. If there is a starting conflict with the user, then try to resolve the problem not publicly, in private messages with the user.

  • Useless publication
    NB! Even if you took into account all the advices (described above) and placed the publication in prime time, but it does not bear a useful semantic load, you should not wait for a miracle: there will be no tens of thousands of views, no giant ratings, no hundreds of comments.

    But the opposite is true: even if you made some mistakes, but you have incredibly useful and "explosive" material, even on Christmas's Eve you will be read, commented, added to favorites and reposted in social networks.