I'm glad my recent post on new corporate blogging tips was so well received. I wanted to add something about the balance of personal and business content in a corporate blog. t seems to me that this is an area where people get fairly confused.

The purpose of a business blog is primarily to talk about what you do at work. Your audience is probably comprised of customers, prospects, co-workers, competitors and a few family members. What they want most from you is information and insight into your job.

But, by adding some personal information, it helps me as one of those customers, prospects, co-workers, etc. see a real human inside that labyrinth of organization where you work. I really have no desire to swim in a pool of your puppy pictures and lawn fertilizing Saturdays.

One the other hand, I want enough of that stuff to see you are a real person. Corny as they are, pictures of a newborn make most of us smile. If you had a problem with a surly waiter who ruined a special night, if you sailed at sunset in the Carri bean, I may want a glimpse of that. I may want to know enough of your personal life to understand that you are a human.

What's in it for the corporation that employees you? A good deal. As we wrote in naked Conversations, "We live in an age when most people don't trust large organizations." But blogging lets us break down the large organizations into real human units of energy and it makes a great deal of difference in how the overall company is perceived.

This happens all the time in business. You sit down for a business meal, where you and your dining partner are about to discuss some monumental deal. How does it start? "So how was your weekend," one asks the other. Then they discuss spouses and children, golf and snow shoveling. Somehow the business part finds its way in, hopefully getting to the next steps part, with the after-dinner beverage