Upon discovering that a blog is an appropriate marketing channel for your company, you need to build the site. Designing a blog for a company is not a great deal different from building out any other part of a site, or creating a new corporate site.

Tip #1: Do not use a generic template through Blogger/Blogspot or Xanga.

If a blog looks like a hundred thousand other blogs, how is that branding the company to people who come to the site? The word “Official” cannot enhance a bland template. Templates can be your friend if they are tailored to the corporate colors and can include official logos. Including graphic elements that tie into the corporate site can allow the blog to retain its uniqueness while still being professional.

Tip #2: Determine the target audience.

Using the same template as the rest of your site may be appropriate for reaching corporate partners, but it may not be engaging enough to put a personality on the company to engage future customers, clients, or shareholders. By focusing on audience segments, one can determine whether the blog design should have featured articles in various categories in a magazine-style, or whether it will be one column of chronologically dated posts.

Tip #3: Develop a wire frame. No, really!

It is generally easier to start a blog with three columns than to add a column to a two-column design. When drawing up a wire frame, create mock-ups for both the homepage and the internal pages.  They need not be the same. This is particularly important if the homepage is not going to include any full-text articles.  More posts may fit above the fold in the homepage, but an internal page would focus more specifically on an individual post.

My Best Suggestion:

When designing a corporate blog, take inspiration from sites that work aesthetically and functionally -and morph them with the corporate image. A blog should stand on its own merits apart from the corporate site.  Its design should be carefully crafted to be official without saying it, and unique enough to have its own brand.

Filed under: Design & Development, Social Marketing on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 by Jacob Wolfsheimer |
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