Corporate blogs are widely used as a marketing communication tool which mainly serves the purposes of brand building, customer service, technical support and promotion for the company.
Not only it helps to build stronger relationships with important target groups (employees, clients, media, general public and shareholder) with low cost, it encourages employee participation in contribution of expertise and allows free discussion on issues or topics, thus generating a collective intelligence for the company.
Besides, corporate blogs also enable the customers to obtain the information needed rapidly through a series of discussion and to share their views or ideas by writing comments. Hence, valuable information and instant feedbacks can be communicated to the company which may inspire new ideas for improvement, therefore creating a two-way communication. Furthermore, it can be used to announce new products and services, explain and clarify policies of the company and to react on public criticism on certain issues.
Examples of corporate blog
· Dell’s corporate blog is a successful one as the company posts with a great conversational voice, and it listens and responds to customers as well as it publishes breaking news on their blogs. It also maintains its blogs postings with a minimum of 1 or 2 postings per day, to keep content fresh and encourage repeat visits. Generally, “Direct2Dell” focuses on Dell’s news such as launching of new products and etc.
Direct2Dell
· Southwest Airlines, unlike Dell, does not make its company as the main discussion topic in their blog postings, which is a relatively good thing for the visitors of their blog. The company blogs about itself as well as the airline industry with a “ personal touch “ and has been uploading a great deal of fun, behind-the-scenes videos which are both captivating and interesting. This is how Southwest Airlines make their visitors keep coming back and enjoy themselves while reading their postings. .
Nuts About Southwest
· GM FastLane Blog is a good example of corporate blogging, Apparently, GM has realized that the actual purpose of having corporate blogs are not to republish press releases or news which are already known to the public. Rather, GM emphasizes about their vehicles and the design choices they make while creating them in its blog. Also, it also stimulates discussion on interesting treatises about the current hot issues, such as alternative energy.
GM FastLane Blog
For more examples of corporate blogs, please refer to:
15 companies that really get corporate blogging
Benefits of corporate blogging:-
· Increase traffic of users who provides useful information
· Brand image creating, improvement on media relations, potential community building
· Reduce cost of traditional PR activities
· Search engine positioning (make your website rank higher)
· Centralized hosting and structured conversation threads of posts and comments allow easy information gathering for employees
· Reduce cost of thoughts and ideas gathering
· Employee integration
· Create corporate identity among employees
Although it shows that corporate blogs brings a great deal of opportunities and benefits, there are still problems with corporate blogging that a company must deal with.Drawbacks of corporate blogging :-
· Make it easy for invasion of privacy or surpassing the information security system, resulting loss of company’s confidential data
· Expectation of updating blog regularly
· Need to responding customers instantly which otherwise would result in customers’ complaints and disappointment
· Accountability and credibility of the information provided by executives
· Risk of losing control over the communication strategy
· Unfavorable organization culture make known to public
· Leak of important insider information
Corporate blogs are basically beneficial to a company if used well, and a menace if used poorly. Hence, companies which participate in blogging activities should manage it effectively to the benefit of their companies.Related links:
Corporate Blogs Not Trusted
Corporate blogs – innovative communication tool or another internet hype?
2 comments:
Hi,
I would like to point out that corporate blogging is also very common amongst the banks. Maybank for instance, has posted an issue, regarding PayPal Withdrawal Review on Maybank Visa Debit Card. Shortly after that, the blog was flooded with comments. Through this, the banks are able to identify customer's problem and improvement can be done to the system.
Cheers.
hi galaxycharm,
thank you for your information. to be frank, we are not aware that maybank has a corporate blog as well. we'll be grateful if you can provide us with the link to access to maybank's corporate blog so that we can further understand how maybank uses its blog for its business functions.
hope to hear from you soon.
Post a Comment