In order to maintain competitiveness, corporations are now increasingly looking for opportunities to make their corporations unique than others. Although traditional media serves as a solid medium that spreads company messaging to the world, the trends of information consumption are evolving, however. Corporations are now slowly starting to realize the importance to convert to blogging. By blogging, corporations are able to connect directly to its customer which is not available by traditional media. Generally, corporate blogs are categorized into two major types which are external blogs and internal blogs. External blog refers to weblog that publicly available while internal blog is a weblog that for employees of corporate.STEPS FOR CORPORATE TO CREATE BLOG :
1. Determine if blogging is suit for your corporate
There are many corporates are attracted by the concept of blogging and start to adopt corporate blogging. However, not all corporates are suitable to adopt corporate blogging. Corporate should examine the target audience and whether blog is effective to develop information to audience.
2. Determine if corporate is willing to invest in blog
Although blogs can be built on free platforms, it is important for the company is willing to invest money into customizing the design of the blog, hiring expert for training, allocating manpower hours for blogging, etc.
3. Create a strategy
After collecting all vital data and having the approval necessary to proceed, it is the time to write a strategy that defines the direction of the blog and its purpose.
4. Select and train bloggers
It is important to decide if the blog will have a single or multiple author because there are multiple expertise idea could be taken. However, it is not necessary that multiple author is better. For those smaller-sized company, it is encouraged to have CEO as the author of the blog to communicate product-related updates, company news, and industry views. Bloggers should be trained on blogging practices , writing tips, and promotions. As to avoid any problem in future, a well-trained blogger should mention clearly corporate blog policies.
5. Writing post
Some companies work with their team to create an editorial calendar that makes it easier for bloggers to author their post. Moreover, blogging frequency is established too which is crucial for reader retention. Company such as Intel list out all those upcoming events, product launches, and post ideas. Company should take note that press release and white papers should be avoid to be included on blog.
Challenges that faced by corporate blogs :
1. Time wasting
The biggest cost of corporate blogging not money but time consuming. It spend 1-2 hours of executives to manage the blog everyday.
2. Hard to get attention
Although internet is developed rapidly nowadays, the truth is that there aren't massive increases in visitors to the web from day to day, also, there are only 24 hours in the days. As there are millions of web around the world, it is not easy to rise to the top of marketplace and getting attention that long lasting.
3. Employees don't represent brand
The mental capacity of some employees that are just out of college aren't a good blogger who are always concern with their activity they had on MySpace and Facebook. They may cast the brand in the wrong light.
4. Difficulty in measuring success
It is difficult to measure the success of a corporate blog since it is not measured by raw numbers like others. The success of a corporate blog is measured upon comments, trackbacks and qualitative intangibles.
Examples of successful corporate blogging:
1. Google
2. Adobe
3. Flickr
4. Facebook
5. Yahoo! Search
6. Dell
7. Digg
8. Linkedln
9. Ask
10. General Motors
Useful links:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog
2. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/15/a-guide-to-corporate-blogging/
3. http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/top-15-corporate-blogs-ranked-may-2008/
4. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-many-challenges-of-corporate-blogging/
4. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-many-challenges-of-corporate-blogging/
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