Dimanche 12 mars 2006
7
12
/03
/Mars
/2006
19:27
According to Dan Bricklin, each company has different reasons to set up a corporate blog owing to their business activity and to their size.
· The consultant business can concerns engineers, marketers, event planners, freelance writers and designers. They would for sure take advantage of a blog in order to build up their authority and to develop their network
· Other activities which provide repetitive information such as guides, fishing charters or rafting companies have interest to show their expertise by providing information and photos on their blog
· Companies from each sort could create a corporate blog as it takes “as little or less effort than sending an email”
I partly agree with this article. In my opinion, a corporate blog requires a huge time investment. That is to say that a consultant will have to find additional time to feed a corporate blog; and that is not so easy. I would suggest consultants and companies to first test corporate blogging by setting up a temporary blog and then see whether it is valuable or not.
Robyn Aber writes that it is not relevant for every company to use a corporate blog as a communication tool. Indeed, its informal style may not fit with a conservative enterprise. On the other hand, they are appropriate to those which encourage innovation and liberal thoughts. According to him, business blogs are more favorable to small and midsized businesses.
Contrary to what Robyn Aber writes, I think that corporate blogging would be a good opportunity for a traditional company to break its conservative image; unless it really wants to do it. Robyn Aber has the same point of view than Anita Campbell (following article): it is more relevant for a small and midsized business to set up a corporate blog.
Ø Article: Ganapati Priya (April 2005), ‘Business blogging on the rise”, www.inc.com
Anita Campbell (editor of the blog Small Business Trends) quotes “blogs are tailor-made for small businesses and they are a better tool for them”. She also argues that large companies have to be very careful about the information they can provide into their blog. The risks taking are then higher for a large than a small size company.
What Anita Campbell says is judicious regarding the large companies. On the other hand, she should consider that small and medium businesses have most of the time limited time and resources to efficiently feed a corporate blog.
The author of this article insists on the fact that small and medium size companies can all corporate blog. Indeed, blog software companies provide tools which are very easy to use. He also gives some examples of blog software companies: Movable Type, Blogger.com and Radio Userland. He adds that blogging offers to small business owners a good opportunity to be present on the Internet, without knowing HTML or hiring a designer/developer. Thus, blogs represent for small businesses, an excellent mean to reach a large audience for a minimum investment.
If we only take the points above into consideration, we can argue that corporate blogs could be used by small and medium size companies; but companies have to keep in mind that it takes time to correctly feed a blog. Moreover, I think that large companies will always have a competitive advantage on small ones: large companies will be able to integrate the most expensive tools (generally the most efficient) and to have many employees writing comments.
John Cass is director of Internet Marketing Strategies at Backbone. He argues that he is more in favor of corporate blogging for small companies. Indeed, it is an excellent opportunity for them to share the stage. Because the blogging is mainly based on ideas and not on financial resources, small companies should not be limited. They would only be slowed down by the importance of their ideas. Nevertheless, small companies can be more reactive than the large ones because there are fewer barriers to face: a corporate blog is then an excellent tool to quickly develop new ideas. Moreover, thanks to a corporate blog, it is easier for them to precisely understand which role their niche plays inside the market. Generally speaking, “small businesses have more to gain and less to loose” than the large ones which have to cope with stakehorlders. Last and not least, the relative benefit of an efficient corporate blog could be more relevant for a small company; for example, 3 new customers could lead to a 100% increase in annual revenues.
“Small businesses have more to gain and less to loose”? I do not think so. A very bad feedback posted by a customer on a corporate blog will proportionally have the same consequences for a small as for large size company. Generally speaking, I think that the impact of a corporate blog on the activity of a company will lead to an equivalent ratio for both small size and large size companies.
The author of this article thinks that corporate blogging is more interesting for large companies:
· Blogs have to be fed regularly and large companies have the means to do it as they can benefit from the support of many employees
· A large company is empowered by the numerous posts of their customers
· A large enterprise has more interest to show a human face to its customers.
· It provides many possibilities to establish direct connections with customers
· They own large customer bases; which means that customers were already interested in communicating with them
· They have the possibility to leverage their employee base, which have a strong impact on the creation and development of communities.
This article balances the previous articles which pretend that corporate blog are more relevant to small size companies. Actually, I think that each company will benefit differently from a corporate blog. It is a good mean for small companies to be listened by a great number of players and an efficient way for large companies to appear more human. Then, how can we compare those two benefits and argue that it is better from such or such company?