By Mike Wellman

Question: What happens when you ask too many of the right questions?

Answer: You end up with your average, boring company blog.

That probably wasn’t the answer you were expecting.  In a world where we are working harder to provide more consultative support to our business partners and gain better information to make more effective decisions, we are taught that success comes from asking smarter questions.

Taking that advice, communicators have asked our team what would often be considered the “right” questions in relation to social media, and blogging in particular.  I.e., you’ve been looking for help on things like segmentation, search engine optimization, demonstrating return on investment, engaging detractors, and techniques for aligning your blog to your company strategy.

The good news is that these are all things our CEO would be thrilled to hear and that we should keep in mind.  With more data available and still-tight budgets, we have to maintain some level of perspective to respond to rising scrutiny from senior leadership.

But the catch-22 to this upside is that these are also the questions that cause us to focus too much on business outcomes, not enough on truly reaching our stakeholders; and can turn us into *shudder* corporate blah-gers.

Maybe the “right” question we should ask is actually: “Are we having enough fun with our blogs?”

Maybe your CEO wouldn’t want to hear that, but it’s an important question to keep in mind.  Without passion, humor, or some amount of creativity, we often end up with what reads like marketing copy because we are too focused on the business objectives we’re hoping to drive.  There is no point having the perfect message if we can’t make it compelling.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you a model for determining the business value of fun, and I secretly hope that it doesn’t exist.  What would be the fun in that?

However, I do think that it works.  Case-in-point: Check out how jetBlue responded to the Steven Slater debacle this past week.

Though some are highly critical of the company right now, I’ve always thought their communications team was pretty spot on with its messaging.  I love how their response at a critical time is honest, frank, contains humor (linking to Office Space when all eyes are on you?) and very un-marketing-y.

Along these lines, check out three more laugh-out-loud examples of fun, humor, and passion shining through corporate blogs below:

“Starbucks Listens to Customer Request for More Sizes” (Starbucks)

Nominated because: I really did not want this to be a joke.  If you’re unsure about injecting humor into your blog, consider taking advantage of an occasion like April Fool’s Day to experiment.

“Amazon, Woot and You: But Mostly Woot” (Woot.com/Amazon.com)

Nominated because: This is the funniest way to announce a merger I have ever seen, and I love the photo of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, and Matt Rutledge, Woot’s CEO.  Also worth checking out is the accompanying music video. Yes, a merger announcement music video.

“I am the World’s Most Interesting Intern: Las Vegas Edition” (Cisco)

Nominated because: Cisco deserves kudos on taking a good thing and running with it, as well as making good use of their interns.

If nothing else, I hope you enjoyed those posts as much as I did. What other examples would you add?  Has anyone else found success by injecting humor or passion into their company blogs?  Please share!