Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

Here’s a smattering of thoughts I encountered these past couple of days on corporate blogging. Let’s start off with a controversial question:

1. Should the military blog?

If a corporate blog can be considered a liability by some corporations why won’t it be viewed with extreme skepticism by the military! Exactly. But according to a Wired report, the commanding general at “one of the Army’s leading intellectual hubs” has directed his troops to start blogging. Why?

Hopefully we’ll hear much more from the Army iron majors with the recent decision by Lieutenant General William Caldwell, IV, Commanding General of the US Army Combined Arms Center, as excerpted from a recent CAC memorandum below:

Command and General Staff College faculty and students will begin blogging as part of their curriculum and writing requirements both within the .mil and public environments. In addition CAC subordinate organizations will begin to engage in the blogosphere in an effort to communicate the myriad of activities that CAC is accomplishing and help assist telling the Army’s story to a wide and diverse audience.

Pretty much one of the reasons any corporation would get into corporate blogging. What do you think?

Should the military blog?

2. Jackie asks Josh some questions

My good friend Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer, asks Josh Bernoff (Author of Groundswell, and Analyst at Forrester) questions about his new book “Groundswell” which he co-authored with Charlene Li.

Some of the Q&A that resonated with me.

The number one mistake companies make in planning their social media strategies is:

Concentrating on the technology first. If you decide on the objectives you want to accomplish, you may get where you’re going. If you say “let’s start a blog” or “let’s start a community” you may be calling me 6 months from now saying “I got this off the ground, now how is this supposed to be helping me?” This is actually a lot more common problem than technology problems or authenticity issues, which get all the discussion.

There’s more:

Awhile back, a well-known blogger considered calling his book “Blog or Die.” (Calmer heads prevailed.) Have any companies died from lack of, or improper use of blogging?

Deaths are rare. Much more common are boring, laundered corporate blogs that nobody wants to read. They just reinforce the idea you are that faceless corporation that we always suspected. What ends up dying is the blog, not the company.

Go ahead and read the rest of the article here. If you’re still not satisfied, check out Josh and Charlene’s Groundswell. I should get a copy myself.

3. Yoplait’s got a corporate blog – and it’s in French!

Got an email from the folks behind the Yoplait blog. Apparently, it’s a french marketing consultant. Yoplait has started a corporate blog and it’s all french. hmm… wonder why they don’t have one in English. Maybe it’s not a big market. Why are they blogging? (After the jump)

Anyways, here’s why, according to the email:

The second best selling brand in dairy products objectives are clear. Using its blog, the company  will benefit from a direct link to millions of customers in a friendly bilateral communication environment. Intended to be a reference on its market, this new communication channel will gather key information about dairy products related issues, and allow Yoplait to express itself freely, independently of traditional media, on general and sensible topics.

I guess it could be said better in French. Anyone who gets French, tell me how the first two posts shaped up. Check it out here.

Filed under: Business Blogging