Best Buy, a mega-giant in the home entertainment, electronics, and other industries is putting on a massive “boot camp” training session for its employees to prepare them for what’s known in the retail trade as “Black Friday” in the U.S.–the Friday after Thanksgiving. The National Retail Federation estimates that BestBuy will get its share of the more than 137 million Americans who will go shopping between Friday and Sunday.

Yours may not be a retail business, but whether it’s the holidays or other times of the year when your business gets more intense if you do anything special to prepare for it so that your customer service remains top-notch, brag about it. Heck, even if it’s not seasonal, brag about what you do–customers love knowing that you’re thinking ahead about how to make their lives easier. Use your corporate blog to try inviting suggestions on how you could serve them better–you might be surprised at what you can learn by just plain old asking.
Journalists are charged with being impartial in their coverage of people and events. In your corporate blog, you can certainly be biased in favor of your own company’s products and services, but it’s good to give credit what it’s due to others in the industry–while also, of course, pointing out how your company is different/better, serves a different niche, etc.

But journalists can skew that “impartial” view by giving equal weight/time/coverage to the opinions of small minorities. A powerful example is a current debate about global warming. The Washington Post reports this from symposia of scientists:

Be sure your corporate blog reflects an accurate and fair view of your company. Don’t distort your ethics. Don’t misrepresent how you treat employees. Don’t hyperbolize your success. And if you don’t like what the fair and accurate view says about you, you have two options: you can either start writing solely about industry news rather than your own company (which is okay) or go back to the drawing board on your management and other policies. A catchy headline is the best way to get people to read your blog post. Journalists and newspaper editors know this–they hire people specifically for their ability to write those killer headlines.

Consider this one in a Washington Post article today: Fuel Efficiency as a Component of Freedom. Don’t you wonder what that’s all about? I did and was surprised to find–eventually–that it was really about performance testing a new fuel-efficient Mercedes-Benz in a grueling drive across the Russian countryside. The writer, Warren Brown, meanders from Russian history to describing the character of the two hosts at a stopover during the drive and quietly sandwiches the car test information in between. It’s a masterful job of finding much deeper connections than just simple test conditions and results.

I suspect Mercedes-Benz couldn’t be happier with the resulting article–talk about giving your product great exposure! And corporate blog writers everywhere can take a lesson from Mr. Warren on how to give greater meaning to your company information by building it into a wider context. If your business can use female customers, you’d be wise to listen to the marketplace. It hasn’t been “business as usual” in that arena for a long time.

Found this one today on a blog about single working women. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking they don’t need to account for the fact that increasingly women are the members. The ones who bring the guests. The ones who spend the money. The ones who can–and will if they’re satisfied–help your business by positive word-of-mouth promotion.

Women are the ones businesses must begin courting. Great article in the New York Times recently on the topic of what women want (requires free signup). Some of the smartest companies have initiated whole women’s initiatives aimed at finding out how their women customers really feel and adapting their services to meet those expectations.

Your blog is the perfect place to begin engaging with the females in your target audience. Talk to some of your women customers. Talk to your women employees. Listen. Then think about including topics in your blog that specifically address women’s concerns. It’s a winning strategy today and will only become more so in the future.