Ø Survey: Backbonemedia (2004), “Corporate blogging: is it worth the hype?”, p.52
This survey is illustrated by the corporate blog of Annie’s Homegrown. This company makes organic food products and its blog is what we call a “character blog” as the writer is a rabbit named Bernie. Not only it presents new product ideas but it also encourages the readers to give their feedback; thus the company can know what they think about gluten-free products or bunny cookies for example. From a general point of view, feedbacks are interesting for both the customers and the company: customers express their wishes and the company tries to fulfill them.
I think that this “character blog” is successful because the targets are children; as bloggers call upon transparency I do not advise to use characters in other corporate blogs. This corporate blog is a perfect illustration of the benefits mentioned earlier: feedbacks improve relationships and strong relationships lead to good business results.
Ø Survey: Backbonemedia (2004), “Corporate blogging: is it worth the hype?”, p.53
Bill Higgins who is Systems Engineer at IBM explains that the company does not look “for comments on product development or customer service issues”. This balances with the successful cases of Microsoft and Macromedia. However, Bill Higgins thinks that his blog has been successful regarding thought leadership, building a community and transparency.
I am not sure about the success of such a blog in building community: customers enjoy giving their comments on such or such products. I think that IBM would be more competitive by integrating comments of customers into the development of its products.
Ø Book:Kline David & Burstein Dan, (2005), “How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture”, CDS Books, ISBN 1593151411, p.124-135
David Kline illustrates his book with the interview of Robert Scoble, who has become one of the Microsoft’s tech evangelists. This employee explains that his role is to give a human voice to Microsoft in order to change its reputation of impenetrable organization. He adds that it is a fantastic and efficient way to communicate: the word of mouth is exponential because people pass along his articles to other blogs which are linked to other blogs and so on.
This case study is the perfect illustration of the benefits a corporate blog can provide to a company. The blog above is very appreciated by the customers of Microsoft as it is transparent and honest: Robert Scoble writes without any censure.
Ø Book:Kline David & Burstein Dan, (2005), “How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture”, CDS Books, ISBN 1593151411, p.202-209
Jonathan Schwartz is president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystem and at the same time, one of the highest-ranking executive bloggers. According to him, more than 175 000 people read his posts every month. He explains that traditional communication channels regularly divert its comments from their original senses; thanks to his blog, there are no intermediaries to deform what he says. He also writes that inside his company there are two schools: the old one which is favorable to blogging because it gives more credit and transparency to what the communication and the new one which argue that the risk for confidentiality is too high and that Jonathan Schwartz should stop blogging.
This situation shows that the opinions are divided regarding the implementation of a corporate blog. For those who are not convinced about the benefits of such a tool here is my answer: a corporate blog is a communication channel which allows to inform people nearly instantaneously and simultaneously for a very low cost.