A friend of mine, a very successful public relations professional, recently told me that many of her clients are now asking her about blogging because they believe it’s a critical part of remaining competitive, that their clients are all doing it so they should be doing it too.

This came just after a chat with another friend whose boss started a blog because his superiors told him he had to. The problem is that the boss doesn’t have time to maintain the blog so my friend is updating it for him.

Both situations are emblematic of what’s wrong with corporate blogging today. Too many businesses are diving into blogging because they think it’s a checklist item, that they need a blog because their competitors have one or because it’s the “thing to do.”

Those strategies – if you can call them that – are doomed to fail because blogging isn’t about satisfying a competitive mandate; it’s about having something to say.

That’s what I told my friends. The culture of the blogosphere demands that people who blog should do so because they have a need to communicate that is unmet by traditional channels. It’s not a checklist item. People who blog out of obligation or resignation will fail because they will bring no passion or commitment to the process. It’s passion that makes blogging work.

I’m not denigrating the role of corporate PR. I think it’s appropriate that PR should create and enforce corporate standards for disclosure in any communications, online or otherwise. Microsoft and Sun both have very active blog cultures, but they also have strict rules on accountability, insider information, forward-looking statements and other activities that tend to draw the attention of the SEC.

There are ways that even publicly held corporations can blog successfully, though. Look at Stonyfield Farms, the yogurt maker. Its four corporate blogs talk about child-rearing, organic farming, healthy kids and women’s issues. They’re successful because they touch a nerve with customers and don’t necessarily involve promotion of Stonyfield products. You can get good information from these blogs about nutrition news and government programs without ever knowing or caring that it’s a yogurt company that’s providing the information.

This is the way corporate blogging should develop, I think. The topics should be selected because they resonate with customers who have similar values and interests, not because they promote a product. The corporate marketing strategy of the ’00s is all about this kind of “soft” selling because it promotes a brand without shoving it down the customer’s throat. Blogs are a way to pick up smart and interesting people within a company and showcase them to the outside world in a way that makes their interests and values a part of the public’s interests and values. It is, as Stonyfield’s website says, “a chance for you to get inside Stonyfield and get to know us, and us to know you.”

Smart companies increasingly will understand this.