Summary: Sony Electronics (SEL) launches company blog with the voice of PR lead Rick Clancy (via Charlene Li) — 5 Step evaluation of said SEL blog — eliciting response from fellow bloggers

As a matter of fact, they’ve gotten in right, twice by launching two not one company blogs (Sony Electronics and Sony Playstation). Those are the two new Sony corporate blogs that I discovered today, via Charlene Li at Forrester Research, who writes:

Sony’s blog is written by Rick Clancy, head of corporate communications for Sony Electronics. I know Rick pretty well, having worked with him when I was a TV analyst and he is the ideal choice to blog for Sony.

First of all, he’s a straight shooter — not something you take for granted with PR people. Look at the first post: Sony No Baloney.

Second, he has something to say. Rick has been at Sony a long time. He understand the company and all its parts. This should make for interesting posts.

Third, he has authority. Everything important Sony Electronics says goes through him. If Rick wasn’t Sony’s top blogger, whoever was would have to go through him anyway.

What I think? (These are my 5 simple rules to evaluate any company blog)

1. Engagement: Yes, it allows comments (I’m not sure if they’re moderated, well they are) and they do have a slew of comments for the first two posts (30 – 50). The goal is to maintain that level of comments. As we saw at LinkedIn’s blog, we started off with over 70 comments and then the comments ranged between 5 and 30, depending on the interest level of the post itself.

2. Style: The blog is written in an informal and entertaining style and given who Rick Clancy is it’d be great to find out more about the internal workings of a premier electronics company. More interestingly, I admire the candor with which Rick writes:

Like many people, I like to be No. 1. I think it stems from those earliest of Shrub Oak, N.Y. Little League days at age eight when I got a kick out of leading the expansion Cubs with six base hits. (Doesn’t sound very impressive looking back on it, but I still remember.) In any event, while we did not come in on top, there are a couple of recent surveys where Sony ranked No. 2 that I feel pretty good about as well

3. Comment Policy/Privacy Policy: Yes. I’d definitely recommend a comment policy for any blog. Sony nails it with both a comment policy as well as a privacy policy.

4. Search: Yes, it does have a search box on the top right hand corner

5. Categories and tags: No, it doesn’t have these set up. This is something I’m working on for the LinkedIn blog (which I edit and author at times) and I realize the importance this feature assumes as you grow and populate your blog with content. It also is a great way to define your blog calendar itself. At this point, the Sony Electronics blog doesn’t seem to need these but as they start adding newer posts and maybe adding fellow guest contributors this may become a necessity.

Check out:

Sony Electronics blog
Sony Playstation blog

It’ll also be interesting to see if Katie Cotton (from Apple) or other electronics companies follow up with blogs in the future. The question is, what purpose do these blogs serve? And, how do you go about creating a corporate blog for your company? For a primer on corporate blogging, check out my 10 easy steps to start a company blog that I wrote for MarketingProfs where I share my experiences doing the same for LinkedIn (I’m the Community Evangelist at LinkedIn).

I’d also love to find out what Mack Collier thinks of Sony’s corporate blogs. This would be a great company blog for Mack to dissect, on his weekly (i think) Company Blog Checkup series. Mack, what do you think?
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I’m hoping my recent spate of blog posts in topics I’d promised I would focus on, is helpful. Please feel free to leave any comments or let me know if there are other topics you’d like me to cover.