I’ve been posting rather erratically for the past few weeks, but I thought I should provide a quick update on the panel I was a part of, earlier today at South by Southwest (Interactive). The panel discussed the “Future of Corporate Blogging”, where I was joined by Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell and an inspiration (check out what he’s done at Dell) as well as Kami Huysa from New PR Pro. The panel was moderated by Mack Collier of Viral Garden who’s been an old blogging buddy of mine.
Thanks to Jeremiah for the above pic
Here are 5 thoughts we discussed on the panel:
1. Social Media Strategy
Speaking of the necessity of a social media strategy, I’d say go back to the drawing board and figure out where exactly are your users. At LinkedIn, most of our users are online – they were on Yahoo! Groups, LinkedIn Answers and mostly online forums. So creating a corporate blog made all the sense for us.
2. Need for a Feed | Goals for a corporate blog
Once you’ve established that your target audience is online, you’ve gotta figure out the need for a corporate blog. What exactly are you trying to achieve with a corporate blog. Write down your goals. Ours were: user education, enhance user engagement, customer support and breaking news about LinkedIn! What are yours?
3. Future of the LinkedIn blog:
Keeping in mind our goals, we’re aggressively providing users all the juiciest video demos as and when we rollout new features. And, I’m on Twitter so any user can follow me and ping me when they’ve a problem. In addition, the future will see quicker blog posts, and quicker response times from my end.
4. Corporate Blogging ROI:
Absolutely! My best suggestion would be to check out this blog post I wrote recently on the Mprofs blog | ROI of Corporate blogging. Or, check out the Forrester report itself (by Charlene Li). But, in case you were wondering, you can calculate the ROI on a corporate blog.
5. Things to consider before you start a corporate blog
If you’re interested in starting a corporate blog. Ask yourself two questions
a. Where are my users?
b. What goals can I expect to solve with a blog
c. What is the ROI I’m expecting
d. Does a social media strategy support the goals I’ve set for myself.
And, just do it!
—
If you’d like to see how the SXSW panel on “Future of Corporate Blogging” was received, here’s some feedback from a few of those who participated in the session and guess what they had to say about it. Thanks to all for the kind words.
1. Future of Corporate Blogging is about Communication, not tools by fellow panelist, Kami Huyse
2. Corporate Blogging – How the Pros do it? by Scott Monty
3. Corporate Blogging by Ben Lavender
4. Future of Corporate Blogging w/ audience questions by Vanessa Tan
5. Panel Review by Wendy Sight Sarah Goodwin (thanks to Linda Sherman for pointing it out)
6. Heidi on the SDN blog reviews it
And, of course Lionel and I blogged about it on our corporate blogs here and here. Mack’s SXSW review can be found here.
Filed under: Business Blogging
Hi Mario, it was definitely one of the better panels this year. Thanks!
LikeLike
Hi Mario, Thank you very much for this very useful summary and for participating in the panel. I wish I had been there myself but this really helps!
LikeLike
@vanessa,
it was a great opportunity for me to interact w/ peers in this space and glad that the audience found some value in it.
@linda,
keep following the blog. I’ll provide an update on all things corporate blogging as well as social media.
LikeLike
Mario;
I really enjoyed sitting on this panel with you and all of our conversations.
LikeLike
Same here, @kami.
LikeLike
[…] brand (summary/commentary at The Email Wars). Mario was on a panel about corporate blogging (afterthoughts from Mario and a great summary from Scott […]
LikeLike
[…] tools that facilitate them (Read my earlier post on the triumvirate of customer feedback sites). As I mentioned at our SXSW panel, increased speed of response to customer complaints is one of the benefits of using tools like […]
LikeLike
[…] or professionals in communicating the message of professional networking. (check out one of my favorite panel discussions that I participated in at SXSW earlier this year). Thought I’ll highlight a couple of other interviews I did most recently […]
LikeLike
[…] out my recent post on “The Future of Corpoate blogging” based on my presentation at SXSW. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Are Corporate […]
LikeLike
[…] asks the question: “Should all companies have a corporate blog?“. Reminded me of the Q&A exchange I had with some participants at […]
LikeLike
[…] Future of Corporate Blogging (My panel discussion at SXSW 2008 – Mar […]
LikeLike
[…] This is right before my first panel discussion at 10, but I hope I can squeeze in some time to catch one of my favorite tweeters tweet (I mean, speak) on the future of blogging (related: check out my SXSW 2008 panel on the future of corporate blogging). […]
LikeLike
[…] for the kind words, Mack. We definitely had a very insightful and productive session at SXSW (Read reviews from those who attended our session). The above quote is taken from a recent Ad Age article that talks about the hotness that is […]
LikeLike
[…] Credit: SxSWi 2008 Corporate Blogging Panel moderated by Mack Collier, photo by Jeremiah […]
LikeLike