le blog corporateblog

 

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”

 

 

 

 

Ø      Article: Aber Robyn (August 2004), “ The bottom line on business blogs”, www.entrepreneur.com

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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 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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.