Category — links

A couple days ago, I took inspiration from another blogger to write Blogging as Company Narrative, a post about using your blog to tell (and build) your company story. Well, it looks like I’m not the only one. My new twitter friend, Scott Sweeny, just wrote a piece about blog storytelling (as inspired by another blogger): check it out.

And really, besides adding to my point about blogs and your company narrative, these string of posts between bloggers serves to highlight the point of my next post (coming in the next day or two) - about blogging and community. I’ll leave you up in the air as to exactly how this fantastic transition comes together, but rest assured… it’s gonna be sweet.

A couple days ago, Alan Jones wrote a good piece about company narratives - how startups can define who they are by telling good stories about the timeline and character of the company. I agree with Alan too - the company narrative is a crucial part of startup writing. But I’d like to add something to the post.

I gather Alan is just talking about company narrative in the ‘About Us’ section. But I think sometimes, it develops best in your blog. Sure, you should probably have a story somewhere on the frontpage (it’s likely the first thing people will look at), but your blog is the place to really bring it to life. Post funny pictures as you take them; post funny stories as they happen; post why you’re doing what you’re doing as you figure it out; and post retrospectives as you go. Pretty soon, you’ll have accumulated a depthful and dynamic company narrative. One that people can consume all at once by cruising your archives, or even better, one that regular readers develop as you and your story evolve.

That’s the type of company narrative that not only communicates who you are, but engages customers day after day, and brings them back for more again and again. That’s a good narrative, and that’s a good blog.

Now… is your blog telling a story?

I talk a lot about copywriting (well, duh), and most of the time, I mean it as frontpage copy… what people see when they first get to your site, what they see in the ‘about us’ section, and so on. But I also talk about it as the content that combines to form your brand. For a lot of startups, most of this is on the frontpage. But then again, for a lot of others, it’s not. More and more (especially for startups with a central and visible founder/leader), the brand is being formed elsewhere online, in new media. On blogs, on Qik, on twitter, and on… well…. twitter.

People like AJ Vaynerchuk are doing a good job of covering the basics and the specifics of using social media (and twitter) to build your startup brand, and really, I’m glad, because I don’t want to write about that here. But I will write about it somehow… about how everything you produce - blog posts, tweets, and video scripts included is an opportunity to communicate who you are. An opportunity to do startup writing, and of course (as far as I’m concerned), to do quality startup writing.