Notes from Nothing

Utilitarian Corporate Blog – Mint

Reshma Kumar of the Web Guild concurs with the WSJ that corporate blogs (in general) are unimaginative failures – a topic I blogged about a week ago, although she clarifies that B2B blogs fall into this category more than B2C. Here’s her rationale for saying so:

Most corporate blogs would likely agree with the assessment that they are unimaginative failures. They all start with the best of intentions – they need a blog because everyone else has one; it’s the new new ‘thing’; and then they justify it as a means of communicating with and engaging their customers.

Since I’ve already blogged on this topic, I thought why not showcase a corporate blog that does a great job of being informative, imaginative and totally utilitarian:

I know I’m a user of Mint and some of my good friends, Damon and Dave, have worked/advised this awesome personal financial management service. I briefly tried Quicken (paid version) and quickly realized I could get the right level of online finance management services at Mint for Free. I’ll definitely recommend you guys trying it.

But, I digress. Mint is a great example of a corporate blog that’s

1. Utilitarian

2. Ties impeccably with product

3. Syndication/Partnership with other content providers (in this case Motley Fool)

In essence it provides a great resource for those who use the product and are in need of help managing their personal finances. However, it’s also a great resource for those who don’t necessarily use the product but are just looking for great tips on personal financial management.

What’s your favorite corporate blog?

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5

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  1. Mario Sundar

    Got it.

    Well, kind a like my role as editor for the LinkedIn blog. I’d recommend getting as much participation from your colleagues as possible. Makes for an interesting read.

  2. damon billian

    Hi Mario,

    I will be doing some work with the Tokbox blog. I think it will be more of a collaboration with other folks, so I won’t be the only responsible for content. I am still getting my feet wet with some other things, such as Get Satisfaction, our forums & customer service tool.

  3. Mario Sundar

    @Damon,

    It’s a great example of a corporate blog, well done. So, who’s running the Tokbox blog? 🙂

    @trainingtime,

    Well, the challenge is that you present the honest voice of an entire company and that can be daunting at times. But as long as management is committed to it, you’re good.

    At LinkedIn we’ve had over 50 of my colleagues blogging on topic ranging from Product to Engineering. And, I feel like we’re just getting started.

  4. trainingtime

    The problem with corporate blogs is that ownership is divided. An employee might have a great voice, interesting ideas and a loyal following, but if the brand team decides that their message doesn’t match the corporate image, they may be edited, silenced or even fired. The result is the bland, inside-the-lines blog that goes against everything blogs are supposed to be about. Writing by committee. Smart companies unfetter their employees…sadly, there are all too few of those.

  5. damon billian

    Thanks for the Mint mention.

    The blog is done very well, I concur. A lot of that credit actually goes to Noah Kagan for getting it off the ground in the early stages. He set a very high bar that the company had to live up to, something that has been done very well by the Marketing team.

    Even if I am leaving Mint, I will still have to keep the blog in my reader. Now if I could only follow the advice in the blog;-)

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