Phil Wainewright predicts that we will witness new types of corporate blogs in the months to come but today, he draws up this current state of play:
- Internal weblogs to communicate and share team projects
- External blogs to target specific groups of people
- Few companies use RSS feeds efficiently to increase their corporate blog visibility.
- Corporate blogs should not embrace a specific style of format. It depends on the company’s goals.
Corporate blogs have the particularity to be flexible. I advise to each company to adapt its format and content to its specific needs. However, we can draw up to main types of blogs as Phil Wainewright says: internal and external.
Ø Book: Nonnenmacher François (2006), “Blogueur d’entreprise”, Groupe Eyrolles, ISBN 2708133292, p.167-200
According to François Nonnenmacher, there is a wide range of corporate blogs.
- The companies which are quoted on the stock market will use them as financial communication channel because of three characteristics: immediate access, no intermediaries and universel
- Executive blogs. Companies should integrate them into their official website to give them more value
- Employee blogs: this might be the most powerful type of blog for companies
- Expert blogs: it gives credit and credibility to the company
- Community blogs: it can replace the “community home pages” of an intranet and disencumber the mail boxes
- Shift blogs: a diary which could be very useful for people working in rotation (2x8 or 3x8)
- Project blogs which can be part of a community / team blog
- Event blogs: the chronological order of the posts and the interactivity are the two main advantages for this type of blog
This summary reinforces what is written in the previous comment; here, François Nonnemmarcher establishes a wide range of corporate blogs but we will see with the two following articles that its list is far from being exhaustive.
Ø Book: Wright Jeremy (2006), “Blog marketing: the revolutionary new way to increase sales, build your brand, and get exceptional results”, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0072262516, p.93-122
In this chapter, the author compares blogs to several areas of a town; he settles upon an original segmentation:
- The barber blog is open and authentic. It provides the company a better visibility, new ideas and a human perspective.
- The blacksmith blog is based on a high degree of expertise and exchange of information. It is essential to help customers, to spread news and to establish strong relationships.
- The bridge blog links its posts to other blogs and intends to create relationships. It can lead to new business opportunities and new customers.
- The window blog allows internal employees to have a clear vision of what happens outside of the company and informs the public on the company’s life.
- The signpost blog: not only it provides useful information to the readers but it also gives the direction of additional information.
- The pub blog expresses its opinion and valorises the exchange of ideas. It can reinforce the sense of equality, community and fairness of a business.
- The newspaper blog regularly gives news. The company controls the posts and avoids risks in the meanwhile.
In my point of view, those comparisons overwhelm two main ideas: as already mentioned in a precedent comment, the format of a corporate blog depends on the strategy of the company; then, the corporate blogs reflect the personality and the competencies of the writer. I would add that a company has to set up the right kind of corporate blog according to its needs but also to match it with the appropriate writer.
This article establishes three models of corporate blogs:
- Intranet blogs: it minimizes the risks and represents a good way to practise and get used to the specificities of the blogs.
- Event blogs: it gives a second life to an event which is over
- Product blogs: it is a very good way to give a consumer insight
Event if those corporate blogs exist, I think this segmentation is not appropriate. If I were asked to establish the types of corporate blogs, I would merely split them into external blogs and internal blogs as Phil Wainewright wrote.