The Best Security Manufacturer Blog

IDH is a good one.

While many factors go into a good blog, IDH reinforces my belief that a key elelement of success is having someone with industry knowledge and experience at the helm.

So often we see blogs run by individuals with marketing/social media skills, but little to no knowledge of their specific industry.

Other Manufacturers should take note.

Lot's of manufacturers have their own 'corporate' blogs - and it appears as if most of them do it simply because they think they should be doing it - probably because their industry PR vendor told them that by writing about industry stuff, they can be viewed as 'thought leaders'. While this phenomenon certainly can happen, the majority of corporate blog writers never really pull it off - because they are not really writers.

As you mention, blogging has been around for a long time. And my primary objection to most blogs is this: just because someone can write words in complete sentences does not mean that they should consider themselves 'writers'.

Writers need to have a certain 'style' - and above all else - the words that they write need to be interesting enough for readers to engage with the story they are telling/writing about. It's actually that simple, imo.

I am not even into door hardware - I know virtually nothing about the specs and regs and all the stuff that Ms. Greene writes about in her IDH blog.... but I find her writing style engaging and interesting - and I read her stuff. Note that she will engage with her readers via comments (which I have used), as this article mentions. She seeks out interaction.

I am also not in sales - though I have at least some background in this field. Mr. Peterson's blog is a different animal than Ms. Greene's. He writes in the 'life-lessons' style where his story-telling attempts to show how some 'every day' things - seemingly-unrelated to sales - have 'taught' him stuff that has made him better in sales. Note that Mr. Peterson does not have comments on his blog. He is not looking for interaction.

Both writers at least appear to have a purpose - whether or not I like or dislike the individual styles they use. The problem I think most blog writers have is that it is difficult to understand why they even bother writing anything. i.e. they don't appear to have a purpose.

Totally agree! I have been reading iDigHardware for many years (even won a drawing and got photos featured there a couple years ago). I have gained so much knowledge and confidence in my understanding of door hardware and codes that I am often the only one in construction meetings who can make sense of the hardware specs and head off problems resulting from poor specs.