Comments on: Corporate Bloggers: Angels or Demons?

By: Camden Easterling Swindell

Camden Easterling Swindell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:03:27 +0000

Great insights in this article and from readers! The challenge our company, http://www.oberrycavanaugh.com, finds for our clients (as well as for our own blog) is fining the time to maintain a blog, especially a thoughtfully created and effective blog. Many of our clients are smaller local businesses, though many have a national presence, that find it difficult to carve out the manpower a blog requires. It’s encouraging to see that other companies are devoting the time, effort and resources needed to put together valuable blogs.

By: Kate Elzer-Peters

Kate Elzer-Peters — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:55:27 +0000

Thank you for the timely post about corporate blogging. I’m the blogger for the Queensboro Shirt Company. It is a fun, fascinating and tricky position. Every day, I grapple with the question–what will our customers be interested in? How might we entice new customers to check us out if they stumble upon (through search–not the social media site!) the blog. We have had some good success highlighting our customers and their stories on the blog. That entices a high level of engagement.

Our blog is still in its infancy. We are still finding our voice, and deciding what information we can deliver through that format that is valuable and interesting for our customers, is timely and relevant without being inflammatory, but interesting enough to not sound like a government memo. It is certainly a challenge.

The points you bring up about external and internal support are great. I spend a lot of my day reading other corporate blogs and trying to incorporate ideas and writing styles that I like into our blog. It does take the buy in of our whole organization for it to be successful. I solicit feedback from our customer service, IT, merchandising, and logo departments to make the blog better and more informational.

I agree, whole heartedly, that for a corporate blog to be useful and not just another form of spam it has to be interesting and useful. We are working on figuring out what that will ultimately be. I would welcome any comments about our blog! It is at http://queensboro.wordpress.com

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:19:14 +0000

After twenty years in corporate America in five industries, I appreciate your comment on politics and silos, Bryan. That is the part where the blogger needs to be a negotiator internally, as well as an advocate for the community. I believe that honesty and truth are two solid terms for “telling it like it is”.

Marketing has been used to integration as amplification. These tools actually allow you to whisper in a way that is relevant and desired by the customer, when handled properly. It’s a whole new dynamic. The education part is where I talk about bringing the conversation inside the organization in my slides (at Conversation Agent). We tend to pay more attention to what third parties are saying internally.

Thank you for teasing the topic out further in your thoughtful comment.

By: Allison G.

Allison G. — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:58:28 +0000

Some really excellent points here! I’m a CEO who recently launched a blog, alijorblog.com, that gives updates on our main site and advice to other entrepreneurs. The main goal of the alijor blog though is to allow our users to have a platform where they can express their needs and, as you said, learn what they want.

By: Bryan Stapp

Bryan Stapp — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:27:25 +0000

Great post – one thing I would add is that the corporate blogger will be successful as long as the organization is willing to admit that it sometimes makes mistakes. The company culture needs to support a dialog that allows their writer to acknowledge customer concerns and address them head on. In theory, every company should be falling all over themselves to have this kind of direct communication with their customers, but too often corporate politics and “turf protection” gets in the way.

And at the same time, the corporate blogger need not be an apologist or a cheerleader – there are many times when they need to set the record straight in an educational way. There is a fine line that the blogger needs to walk to support the company, its customers, and to tell it like it is.