With the increasing online presence among regular brick and mortar companies, the pressure of having your own corporate blog is going through the roof. Not having a blog these days is definitely a sucker bet—your competitors will gain an unfair advantage in many aspects. The reasons why companies blog, however, and their goals, are sometimes completely wrong, and this post will outline four of the objectives you should not be focusing on.

1. Huge amounts of traffic

While having a very strong reader base would be nice, this should not be the goal of a corporate blog. Rather than getting heaps of non-converting traffic, you should focus on conversions—getting your readers to actually do something rather than read your articles and click away. Traffic is the end goal of an Adsense blog (even though we can talk about conversions there as well, as readers have to click on your ads). A corporate presence focuses on promoting that business, and that’s it.

2. Social media followers

A high retweet count or many fans on your Facebook don’t necessarily mean your business is doing well, unless we are talking about targeted followers. If your company deals with financial services, don’t get all hyped up at your 10,000 Facebook fans if half of them have absolutely no interest in your business.

3. High comment count

Even though it is fun to read a blog with comments upon comments on each article, this should not be the case with a corporate blog. You want your readers to talk to you directly, instead of engaging in discussions with the rest of the world. You might end up with unfavorable comments and reviews, or even having your competitors tip the discussion in another direction. A debatable practice among corporate blog owners is to turn comments off altogether. Ever wondered why? If you plan to allow comments on your corperate blog, moderation is a must. Always make sure the conversation stays on topic, and do your best to convert commentors into potential leads you can communicate with through regular business challenges.

4. Monetizing through various third party ads

The worst mistake a company could make with their blog is to monetize it with irrelevant third party ads. The sole purpose of your blog is to move the business forward by promoting your ideas, talking to the public, or announcing product releases. You definitely don’t want to lose readers by having them click away from your page for the sake of a few cents. The only exception to the rule is to team up with a company offering complementary services and display their ads. For example, if you have a used car shop, you could promote a reliable car repair service.

This list is definitely not exhaustive, but contains four of the biggest mistakes you can make with your corporate blog. If you find yourself in any of these scenarios, be sure to change things, starting today, or you will lose credibility and jeopardize your business over the long run. Again, focus your blog on promoting your business and nothing more.