A corporate Blog is a blog that is published by an organization to achieve their goals and objectives. It is a new marketing communication tool for companies. All browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 allow readers to view their posts easily without actually visiting the blog. There are many different types of corporate blogs which can be classified into external or internal blogs. External blog allows employees, teams, spokespersons of the organization to share their opinion in corporate blogs. When a company launches a new product, the company will introduce their new product in the external blog. In short, external blog is a publicly available weblog whereas internal blog only allows the organization employees to view its contents. Employees can access the internal blog through the company's intranet. Internet blog is normally used in meetings and allow employees located at different locations to communicate.
Example of various types of corporate blogging
1. Company Blog
Top 5 company blogs
=Adobe
=Flickr
=Yahoo!Search
2. CEO Blog
Example
=Jonathan Schwartz's Blog
=Randy Tinseth's Blog
3. Industry Blog
Example
4. Department or product Blog
Example
=Google-Product Blogs
=Microsoft Community Blogs
5. Customer service Blog
Example
=My response to Steve Rubel
=ComcastCaves' response to Arrington and other Comcast users on Twitter
Advantages of corporate blogging
Employers or top managers can communicate or contact with their customers, suppliers, investors and employees directly and easily. It is easier to set up a company blog because it is user-friendly for employer and employees to understand the ways to use and update the corporate blog. Moreover, employees can share their opinion and ideas freely in the blog so that the employers will know what are their employees thinking and their job satisfaction. Thus, it enables companies to achieve their goals quickly. Also, it enables other people to give feedback to the company or leader’s progress and the company and leader can seek for improvement from there. As a result, companies will generate big benefits from it. For example, if the corporate blog has a positive effect and feedback, the company's reputation will increase. This will create a good image for the company. Lastly, employers can spread information quickly in the event of emergency. So, employees, customers, suppliers can know the new information or urgent information quickly.
Disadvantages of corporate blogging
Although corporate blogging has a lot of benefits, there are some disadvantages of corporate blogging. First, corporate blogging is time-consuming for companies to maintain. It needs to take several times and energy to keep new information updated regularly. If companies use too much of time in maintaining their blog, it may lead to increased costs rather than benefits. In addition, corporate blogs require good written communication skills to produce a good post. However, some employees do not have such skills to post. Also, there are many cases of workers being fired because of the opinion they wrote on the blog. This is because employees can freely give feedback on the blog; which is a high probability that the employees will be fired if the employers are unhappy with what they wrote. Lastly, everyone can give feedback or comment on corporate blog, so many stakeholders and employees do not view corporate blogging as a credible source. They may trust more on the announcement given in meetings.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I'm impressed but sometimes I laughed. Company blog is what the trend should be now. So almost all companies are following the footsteps. However, some just created and leave it to rust on the internet, without any users actually viewing it when actually its website is a better source of information. It's not a matter of how well developed the company is. Any company can afford a blog, but not all are having equal talent to post or design. In my opinion, if the company wants to semi-focus on a blog, then at least interview bloggers or even train them how to write or post or design the interface, hire proffesionals and give free courses to new trainees or employees. Problem now is that many tend to stay old-fashion and do not even have the will to learn and catch up.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying all companies have bad blogs. Some of them are really well designed and their blogs can actually bring about profits. That's what i will call a successful company.
If a company wants to have a blog. Then better be serious about it. Else i would prefer them not having any at all. Ruining the actual meaning of a blog.