Notes from Nothing

What is Corporate Blogging?

CIO: Insight had a recent interview with Scoble where he talks about corporate blogging. Thought you’d find his take on corporate blogging interesting:

Some blogs are like press releases. New, friendly, cuddly press releases, but they’re still only talking about what’s happening in the company and its products. The really hard thing, the thing I haven’t seen too many people do, is what I was trying to do: be an authority on the marketplace. That really helps a lot.

Here’s how Wikipedia defines corporate blogging (and I agree).

A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases.

I think the key goal for a corporate blog as stated above is “to reach a company’s organizational goals”. I’ve always looked at corporate blogs as a window into a company, a window that allows back-and-forth conversation between a company/those who create its products and its users. As Hugh Macleod, beautifully describes it – it could be that Porous Membrane that facilitates “the conversation”.

But in the poetry of such a “conversation”, should be embedded the nitty gritty of a company’s organizational goals.

How do you define a corporate blog?

Check out my other posts on corporate blogging.

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6

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  1. Mario Sundar

    @Katie and @WebUrs,

    I think there’s unanimity about using blogs to stir the conversation, but I hate to say it, there are corporate blogs that don’t allow comments, including some of the more popular ones.

    From an organizational point of view, what’s important is figuring out what’s the purpose of your corporate blog.

  2. WebUrs

    We define corporate blogs similar and as Katie points out a dialogue should happen

    http://howto.commetrics.com/?page_id=120

    Thanks for the interesting post.

  3. Katie

    I totally agree with Jayne – although we set up our corporate blog as a tool to get fresh content on the website and encourage new visitors: I believe it wont function well at all if we just use it to ram home our message. Rather, it has to create or participate in a dialogue about topics of interest, and provide content that readers might find amusing or useful. That’s what I’m aiming for, anyway!

  4. Mario Sundar

    Thanks @jayne and @douglas for the comments.

    I agree that a corporate blog should be a source for thought leadership. Secondly, it’s important that the culture of an organization as well as that of the individuals who work for that company should come across through the blog.

    @douglas,
    Having a call to action is critical. On the LinkedIn Blog we tie most posts to a relevant product feature wherever applicable. Also, specific goals should be tied to metrics to measure its success.

  5. Douglas Karr

    I notice that most people talk about Corporate Blogging in terms of the current clients and building relationships. When a business reviews its blog’s analytics, it will often find that many of the blogs visitors are first-time visitors. That means that every blog post is a landing page for prospects as well as a message for current clients. That means your blog should be appropriately designed with a call to action for new visitors as well as clear messaging on what you do.

  6. Jayne navarre

    With so much competing for my attention, I want a corporate blog(ger) to reveal personality, perspective and most of all initiate a passionate exchange of ideas, issues, failures and successes related to their product or service, including the “long tail.” If they are only talking about themselves it is not worth my time. I work exclusively in the professional services vertical, specifically helping law firms and lawyers transition into the conversation online. They start out thinking it’s all about them. The persona they project in their blog and other online stuff is that they are a a lawyer. It’s plastered all over their banners like a billboard. Can people really care about a lawyer or the law firm they are associated with. Nope. Readers care about the topic and you have one chance to be passionate and provocative or readers won’t come back. Put the static info about you on another tab. I think a corporate blog should play down the “what they do” and focus on the “what they think.” How can you share that in a way that shows you are passionate about the issues and ideas? It’s the difference between having a conversation with someone who smiles often and some one who takes themselves so seriously they can’t. I want a corporate blog, even those with a serious or complex focus, to give me that which reveals something to think about, to smile about and that you can’t get through traditional channels.

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