Ideas From Launch International

Corporate Blogs: The Next Frontier in Online Communications
Blogs—or web logs, now 9 million strong—are changing the way people communicate online. Like websites back in the early 90s, blogs began as a grassroots phenomenon but have begun to gain the attention of the corporate world.

So, if your organization has a blogging program, or even a policy, consider yourself at the forefront of this communications breakthrough. According to a recent memo from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, just 38% of U.S. adult Internet users are familiar with the term “blog” and just 29% read blogs.

For the uninitiated, a blog is a website that functions as a kind of online diary, updated as frequently as the author desires, with posts typically organized by date or even categorized by subject. (See also Wikipedia’s definition of a blog.) The subject of a blog is determined by the author, as well: There are blogs featuring everything from hardline political banter to stream-of-conscious adolescent chatter to highly focused discussions on technical topics—even marketing (see Seth Godin’s blog).

Among the more successful blogs, though, there is one thing in common: they eschew marketing rhetoric. And although the numbers are small at this juncture, blogs have taken off with technical audiences around the world (check out Microsoft’s blog site).

This new communications medium begs the question: What is your corporate blog strategy?

Don’t have one? Consider what a blog can do for your company:

Reinforce your brand.
Provide a direct conduit to your thought leaders.
Create a community from which you gain insight into your customers.

Let’s say you have thought leaders who are ready, willing, and able to take on the task of maintaining a corporate-sanctioned blog: How do you help them create and maintain blogs that are relevant, while ensuring your company is cast in the best possible light? Consider the following issues when sponsoring a corporate blog.

Determine the role of blogs in your communications strategy
By its very nature, blogging’s casual exchange can help your organization reach out to customers, partners, and the industry at large. They put a human face on your corporation and provide a window into the minds of your company’s thought leaders.

Although it’s important to ensure that a blog’s owner has enough leeway to develop a unique online voice, you might also want to consider how a blog can fit into your communications strategy. Do your thought leaders understand your company’s current marketing messages?

Not that marketing messaging should drive the contents of their posts — in fact, in some communities, blogs that reek of marketing hype are roundly chastised. But understanding the current marketing messages allows your thought leaders to develop discussions that serve both the community and your organization.

Spell out bloggers’ roles and responsibilities
Giving individual corporate bloggers broad capabilities offers them the freedom to develop blogs that are compelling and relevant.

But corporate bloggers should be mindful of your policies—especially with regard to protecting corporate data, company secrets, and the like. You need to determine how much leeway you’ll allow bloggers. Will these blogs be maintained centrally on your organization’s servers? Should the blogs be accessed directly through your corporate website? Will you offer a mechanism for comments, which may facilitate conversations?

Whether your policy is open, giving bloggers carte blanche to discuss whatever they desire, or more tightly controlled, you’ll want to ensure everyone understands the policy because of the potential impact on your brand.

Take care of business
Because of the immediacy of the medium, keeping site visitors engaged requires updated content. Corporate blog fodder runs the gamut from discussing Eureka moments to floating trial balloons and gauging community reaction—once the blog has acquired a following, of course. Will blogs be monitored to ensure that they’re updated regularly and adhering to company policy? If so, by whom? Don’t forget the human resource commitment: Can your thought leaders really spend the time away from their day jobs to fit in one more responsibility? Or—given the potential for connections with customers and the market that can arise through a blog—can they afford not to?

Create content, connection, community
Search engines are the most significant driver of traffic to blog sites. Similarly, search engines can play a vital role in promoting a corporate blog’s existence, and just as with websites, relevant keywords are paramount. Frequent updates also put you in good stead with search engines.

Even better is the stamp of approval from other bloggers. Bloggers link prolifically to sites they find valuable—and by valuable, we mean the quality of content. Creating valuable content helps create a connection, which can eventually evolve into a community of like-minded site visitors.

Consider features and value-adds
For existing blogs, consider the value of adding RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) feed capabilities. RSS feeds are a type of syndication service that push your blog’s content to registered visitors, alerting them of each new entry.

Remember, blogs aren’t just for text, either: in addition to photos and graphics, some blogs augment text posts with podcasts—downloadable MP3 files—containing highlights of particularly insightful presentations or discussions that can stand on their own.

As a communication vehicle, blogging’s role in the corporate world is quickly gaining momentum. Can you afford to let your competitors develop intimate communities within the marketplace—before you do?

At Launch International, we’ve helped hundreds of companies develop communications strategies that make the most of new media—and we can help you, too. Email us at info@launchintl.com to learn more.