THE Corporate Blog April 5, 2009
Posted by Blair Garka in Corporate blogs.Tags: benefits, corporate blog, Microsoft, Nike, Tom Bradley
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Blogging is a way for a company or organization to enhance their image. Companies such as Microsoft and Nike have followed the trend and have set up company blogs. My previous post showed how GM used blogs to advertise automobiles and reach their audience online. Blogs are another form of communication with publics. Blogs create conversation in an open and casual way, which is one reason why the number of blogs increase by 100,000 every day.
The benefits of blogging apply to small companies, as well as, large corporations. Smaller companies can benefit from a blog because it saves money. Setting up a blog is cheaper than other traditional ways of advertising.
Tom Bradley, VP and Executive Director of PR for Cronin & Co., shares the “three Ps” of a thriving corporate blog: passion, persistence, and participation.
Bradley stated that the blogger should feel passionately about the subject. I completely agree that a blogger needs to be passionate. Whether it’s a company or its products, the blogger must enjoy the topic. If they don’t, it will be hard to find new topics for the blog. After reading a few blogs, I have seen how boring the blogs can become if there is no passion or enthusiasm in the posts.
The next quality is persistence. Developing a blog takes a lot of commitment until the right voice is found. If the blogger sticks with it and is consistently creating valuable posts, the blog will be a success.
The third key factor is participation. I think this is an important factor because having a presence online makes your blog credible to readers. Successful bloggers read other’s blogs, comment on them, and build a blogroll. These things drive awareness and traffic to a blog. After a blogroll is built, then the readers can see that the blog has many consistent followers.
After hearing about the benefits to having a corporate blog, I think most companies would agree that a blog would be an asset to their business. It’s easy and inexpensive. Tom Bradley’s tips also gave guidance to future bloggers to help them create a successful blog. (Just be sure to avoid the top five corporate blogging mistakes in one of my previous posts!)
After reading your posts on blogging in the corporate area, I agree with the concise list you provided for what blogs allow. Blogs are a way for individuals from all walks of life can share ideas and thoughts on a topic of interest. They allow a dialog to occur which is important in this Web 2.0 world. Tom Bradley’s “three P’s” are the perfect summary of a thriving blog. If every CEO or corporate blogger was aware of those 3 parts, I think more corporate blogs would thrive and perform the task they intended. Shel Holtz discusses corporate blogging in his blog “a shel of my former self”. Holtz starts by saying that again standards have changed and now what every corporation needs is an authentic and official blog. He mentions that blogs become helpful when the media makes a mistake in a publication about a company. For example, the press wrote something wrong about General Motors and GM tried to get the New York Times to publish a retraction letter but that didn’t go so well. Instead, GM made note of the correction on their FYI blog! Corporate blogs are also updated more frequently since they are on the web. This speeds up response time instead of using the traditional paper press release to respond to an issue.
Blogs certainly are an asset to any company.
I forgot to include the link to Shel Holtz’s blog post on corporate blogging. The link is as follows…
http://nalbanvx.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/the-positives-of-negative-feedback/
I agree that whoever is starting the blog should be passionate about it. If not, the blog won’t turn out the way it should–honest, transparent and authentic. If a person does not enjoy writing the blog, it will be shown through the writing. Persistence is also very important. Blogs do take a lot of time and effort especially in the beginning. Also, by looking at other people’s blogs you will be able to see what looks good and what doesn’t to you. This will help you in creating the best blog you can because you have already seen what works. And most likely, what you like, others will like as well. Blogs are becoming essential to companies and the corporate world. They are a great tool and are useful in so many ways.
Wow, I did not know about this topic until now. Thanx!!