Given the explosion in the corporate blogging and CEO blogging space, I’ve seen a wide variety of blogs show up this past year. As the idea for such a post was brewing, I was glad to read a recent post on Canada.com’s Gazette, which highlighted the 7 highly effective corporate blogging styles that exist today. So, rather than reinvent the wheel why not start with that post.

(The LinkedIn Corporate Blog on Day 1 – Fond memories)

I, personally, felt that the parody blog does not automatically fit into this model and also that we could collapse Individual blogs to CEO blogs (the more well known form of that blog). So, here goes – the five types of corporate blogs (with examples). Feel free to add your favorite corporate blog in the comments section.

1. Company Blog

This is the most common form of the company blog. IMO, the corporate blog is definitely the next stage in the evolution of the corporate website, which (let’s face it) is pretty much static these days. (Read Jeremiah’s remarkable post on the same theme).

Examples: There are so many examples to choose from. The best place to start would be the ranking of the Top 15 Corporate Blogs (ranked earlier this month) that I published a couple of weeks back. Top 5 include: Google, Adobe, Flickr, Facebook, and Yahoo! Search.

2. CEO Blog

The most famous example would have to be the blog of Jonathan Schwartz, CEO at Sun Microsystems, and I’m amazed how he ever finds time to blog, but I’m really glad he sets such a stellar example. I’ve recommended CEOs to quit full-time blogging but rather work as active contributors to their company blog (examples see above), which would of course depend on their busy schedules.

Examples:
Sun CEO – Jonathan Schwartz’s blog
Boeing VP of Marketing – Randy Tinseth’s blog
Top 10 CEO blogs (2 years ago)

3. Industry Blog

This is an interesting type of corporate blog one that we should beware of, because it places some difficult ethical choices for the company at hand. Just last week, I wrote about Miller Brewing’s pseudo industry blog – Brew blog that purports to be an insider blog, while taking potshots at arch competitor – Anheuser Busch.

This is definitely not an advisable strategy for every company but should be considered an option if you consider yourself or employees in your organization as thought leaders in your respective field/technology and choose to establish a blog to discuss best practices. In that case, however, I’d rather have thought leaders blog on the company’s corporate blog!

Example:
Miller Brewing’s Brew Blog

4. Department or Product Blog

Again, department blog is another common style or kind of blogging, which is very popular and ultimately essential for large organizations (particularly Fortune 500). Cases in point are Microsoft, Sun, or SAP’s developer blogs in any particular space. Google’s extensive array of product blogs across their different product offerings (close to 90 in number) probably is another great example.

Examples:
1. Microsoft Community Blogs
2. SAP IT Blogs or SAP Community Blogs
3. Sun Blogs
4. Google – Product Blogs (see the blog roll on the right sidebar)

5. Customer Service Blog

And, finally, the customer service blog or community blog that I blogged of a few months back. Given the preponderance of community forums and discussion groups as the de facto kind of communication media that companies chose to use as conversation methods with their users (more on this later), I haven’t seen the evolution of this kind of a blog, yet. Instead, I find evangelists of companies choosing to talk to/respond/provide customer service with users who choose to ask on social media sites such as Twitter.

Examples:
1. My response to Steve Rubel
2. My colleague Steve Ganz’s (LinkedIn) response to Erica O’Grady (via Twitter)
3. ComcastCares’ response to Arrington and other Comcast users on Twitter