In case you aren’t familiar with the name, Matt Cutts is the public face of Google when it comes to the world of search engine optimisation and writes a well followed blog which focusses on these and other associated areas.

Earlier this week, he wrote a post where he offered 3 so called “rules of thumb” for company bloggers and which might be considered relevant for all business blogs. The ones he highlighted were:

1. Don’t make hard promises about the future
2. Don’t trash talk a competitor
3. Don’t post when you’re angry

(You can see the full post here.)

While I can’t disagree that these are three sound pieces of advice, I don’t know whether I’d view them as the three key points with regard to company blogs - however, they are most certainly relevant.

So why mention them here? Well, primarily because they show something which I believe to be very important when you write a business blog - you shouldn’t suddenly ignore all of the common sense and good advice you have learned about business communications over the years, just because you are writing on a “blog”. A blog is an extension of that, with some extra rules thrown in, I grant you.

So advice such as “don’t rubbish your competition” makes sound business sense whether you are giving a presentation, emailing information to prospects or talking to other people in your industry. It should a no brainer to then apply that same logic when you are writing in your blog, particularly when you take into account the potential size of your readership and the fact that, for good or for bad, the internet has a long memory so getting rid of inappropriate comments you later regret is going to be problematic.

So, just because you are writing on a blog, don’t suddenly bin all of your business communications knowhow that you’ve accumulated - use all of that and then adapt the rules to allow you to play to the strengths that your blog can offer.

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