Why do companies spend thousands on their website and online brand and a heap of time on designing a great user interface only to turn around and slap a wordpress blog (or similar) onto their site with a different layout, nav structure or make a slight variation to an existing template?

Don’t get me wrong I think using a Blogging platform like wordpress, typepad or Blogger is the way to go - My gripe is that no time is spent building a template that fits in with the company site. It should look like you never left. I have always been big on consistency of your brand across all mediums. I struggle to understand why the blog part of your site should look entirely different.

A book I really like and that is still very relevant is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by, Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Law number 19. The Law of Consistency: “All brand communications should have consistency in the message.”

Most web designers should be able to make their own custom Wordpress , blogspot etc theme. At least edit an existing one to fit in seamlessly but they don’t seem to be bothered.

Here are some examples… Now I simply selected companies at random from the Web2.0 directory and surprisingly a large number of sites I clicked on failed. It makes it look like the blog was just an after thought. If you brand is important why would you not take the time to make your blog fit in with your site and in the very least your company colours.

I am wondering why this seems to be an accepted practice in the industry. If your trying to brand your site as innovative and original then please spend a bit of cash or time and get a custom template made for you. It will be worth the effort in the long run.

Not so good consistency between Site content areas and Blog.

Great Examples of consistency between Site content areas and Blog.

I read somewhere recently that there are 84 new blogs created every minute of everyday. That’s a heck of a lot of people talking to themselves.

We basically have a global network of sites with amateurs all talking about things like they are experts. Yes I recognize the irony that I am also writing a blog and giving my advice and opinions on things and I also recognize the irony that perhaps I am just talking to myself and that’s ok.

So who are the “experts” in an area? maybe they are simply the ones that shout the loudest and promote their blog the best, maybe they know no more then the average Jo Blogs.

I tend to read blogs by people who have been there and done that or are going through the process of doing something – eg a new start up, struggles, successes, what they learn, mistakes they made. Real life stuff.

I am fairly sure that there will be a move back to more “credible” sources for content, I also wonder how may of these blogs will be updated a few times then just abandoned to further clutter the series of tubes that is the internets.

I remember writing an essay at University and after completing it thought wow this really is good I will get an A for sure. I remember feeling rather disappointed when I just scraped in with a C.

I read through the comments made by the lecturer “where is the reference to this point” “who stated that” etc. Well I did of course. Basically a great essay in the mind of academia is a bunch of regurgitated content with references. To get an A you simply copy and paste about 10 authors comments together with lines like “according to Smith and Wright etc etc “this is further supported by Bob Knob who states”…. You are not encouraged to add any new thoughts or your own opinions. Which is probably why 90% of Blog posts I read are simply regurgitated content from other sites or simply complete re-posts with links to others. Where is the new original content?

85 new Blogs per minute all copy and pasting from each other – No experts in sight or in-site… So when I finally stumble across a Blog that is a bit different and unique I will bookmark it, and or subscribe to the feed.

Remember in the gold rush days it was not the people mining for gold that made all the cash – it was the people who supplied all the equipment. So only a few bloggers are going to make any decent coin out of Blogging however the ones that supply the best tools will make a fortune.