We love talking about Best Practices here at the Bivings Report, and today we’re offering up a very meta look at best practices in company blogs. Every business has a point of view or way of delivering their products and services – and what better way to share that with the world than on their sites? At last night’s June Social Media Club DC event, the panel discussed the strategies and challenges of their respective companies’ blogs.The speakers ranged from AARP, to Jess3 to the Nature Conservancy and their wise words (along with our perspective) could be distilled in the following list:

DO

• Leverage your company’s unique point of view to create great content. There’s a reason your company does what it does: so share it with the world
• Be Authentic. Chances are – if a reader is checking out your company’s blog – it’s because they care about your products, services, or brand. Or maybe they just think the colors are pretty. Regardless, your blog isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a way to share your organization’s perspective about relevant topics.   
• Blogging takes a sustained and concerted effort. This means posting content on a regular basis, and not expecting your first 300 word post to get picked up by Mashable. Your blog WILL find its voice and niche audience,but getting there will take work and dedication.
• Great content leads to great SEO (not the other way around). Don’t spend so much time worrying about keywords, and more about what you’re actually writing. Sure, its nice when google picks up your content, but the content itself is what will drive traffic (as well as fame, fortune, and new business leads) to your site.
• Get lots of people in the mix. Allow all types of employees to have a voice. The programmers probably have good advice, as do the upper management. Involving many different authors also allows for more even workload distribution.
• Measure. Web analytics can help you see the full picture when it comes to traffic. Tracking the data over time can show valuable trends. Are old posts still getting lots of pageviews? Maybe that’s a good opportunity to revamp them.

DON’T

• Stop posting if the blog isn’t an overnight success.
• Forget to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.
• Aim to sound like your competitors.
• Forget to make sure any guest posts/cross-posted content is OK with your lawyers