Corporate blog

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Corporate blog is a blog that is published and used by an organization, corporation, etc. to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.

Contents

Types

Internal blogs

An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. Many blogs are also communal, allowing anyone to post to them. The informal nature of blogs may encourage:

Internal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings and e-mail discussions, and can be especially useful when the people involved are in different locations, or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise. [1]

External blogs

An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react to public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do. In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they are posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts. According to Hoffman Agency, corporate blogs should not be ‘about me’, but should be a platform to show thought leadership and communicate views on industry issues. [2] [3]

External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

Corporate blogs may be written primarily for consumers (business-to-consumer) or primarily for other businesses (B2B). Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide. The number of subscribers, blog comments, links to blog posts, and the number of times a post is shared in other social media are indicators of a blog's popularity, potential influence, and reach. While business blogs targeted to consumer readers may have a high number of subscribers, comments, and other measures of engagement; corporate blogs targeted to other businesses, especially those in niche industries, may have a very limited number of subscribers, comments, links, and sharing via social media. Accordingly, other metrics are often evaluated to determine the success and effectiveness of B2B blogs. [4]

Marketers might expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits, etc.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to the blog assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marketing</span> Study and process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to customers

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Business-to-business</span> Commercial transaction between businesses

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Corporate communication(s) is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating a favourable point of view among stakeholders on which the company depends. It is the messages issued by a corporate organization, body or institute to its audiences, such as employees, media, channel partners and the general public. Organizations aim to communicate the same message to all its stakeholders, to transmit coherence, credibility and ethics.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Content marketing</span> Form of marketing focused on creating content for a targeted audience online

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social media marketing</span> Promotion of products or services on social media

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporate social media</span>

Corporate social media is the use of social media platforms, social media communications and social media marketing techniques by and within corporations, ranging from small businesses and tiny entrepreneurial startups to mid-size businesses and huge multinational firms. Within the definition of social media, there are different ways corporations utilize it. Although there is no systematic way in which social media applications can be categorized, there are various methods and approaches to having a strong social media presence.

Online presence management is the process of creating and promoting traffic to a personal or professional brand online. This process combines web design, development, blogging, search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, reputation management, directory listings, social media, link sharing, and other avenues to create a long-term positive presence for a person, organization, or product in search engines and on the web in general.

Health blogs are niche blogs that cover health topics, events and/or related content of the health industry and the general community.

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Social media use by businesses includes a range of applications. Although social media accessed via desktop computers offer a variety of opportunities for companies in a wide range of business sectors, mobile social media, which users can access when they are "on the go" via tablet computers or smartphones, benefit companies because of the location- and time-sensitive awareness of their users. Mobile social media tools can be used for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, informal employee learning/organizational development, relationship development/loyalty programs, and e-commerce.

References

  1. ↑ Fernández Dutto, C. (September 19th, 2005)Internal blogs: How to design powerful conversations that open possibilities for action and collaboration within blogs Archived 2006-07-08 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Vivian Wagner, E-Commerce Times. "The Rise of Corporate Blogging." Aug 3, 2012. Retrieved Jan 10, 2013.
  3. ↑ Roger Yu, USA TODAY. "More companies quit blogging, go with Facebook instead." Apr 20, 2012. Retrieved Jan 10, 2013.
  4. ↑ De Young, G. (April 20th, 2010) Meaningful Metrics for B2B Blogging.
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