What is a Corporate Blog?
A corporate weblog published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. In external communications the potential benefits include strengthened relationships with important target groups and the positioning of the publishing organization as industry experts. Internally, blogs are generally referred to as tools for collaboration and knowledge management.
The Nature of Blogs
To understand blogs as a corporate communication tool, one must understand the nature of blogs. The following are the relevant distinctive features of a blog,
Personality
Blogs are not objective as they give you biased opinion and you know it. In a way, they are much like reading letters from someone. You can sense their values, interests, and personality.
Voice
A blog has a voice of its own which is an author's voice. There are no templates for this. The author has to be daring to be a person instead of an official and a voice will be heard. Blogging should not be compared to journalism but you can find similarities between Voice and a good newspaper's columns.
To understand blogs as a corporate communication tool, one must understand the nature of blogs. The following are the relevant distinctive features of a blog,
Personality
Blogs are not objective as they give you biased opinion and you know it. In a way, they are much like reading letters from someone. You can sense their values, interests, and personality.
Voice
A blog has a voice of its own which is an author's voice. There are no templates for this. The author has to be daring to be a person instead of an official and a voice will be heard. Blogging should not be compared to journalism but you can find similarities between Voice and a good newspaper's columns.
Links
Blogging mainly relates to the art of linking and it is the major part of the blog. As blog readers, we want it. The blogs does that for us but in very small niche. With blogs we like, we get interesting links with at least some degree of context.
Feed
This is a technical stuff and blogs can be identified by content-related characteristics alone. Most blogs are published on websites and are also called feeds.
Reasons for Blogging
- Become the expert. Position yourself and your company as the thought leader of your business.
- Customer relations. In a forum where your main objective is not to sell, you will have a more personal relationship with your customers. Blogs are a fast way to join customer discussions, provide tips and insights, or receive feed backs.
- Internal collaboration. Blogs can be used a workspace where project members can each other updated without wasting time writing reports or searching the Outlook inbox.
- Knowledge management. Blogs works in two ways. Firstly, they are an easy way for readers to find information and resources needed. This can be used internally in many organizations. Secondly, blogging is like on-the-job learning.
- Recruitment. If you establish your company as a thought leader, people in your business will pay attention. They will read and discuss what you have to say. Chances are good as they see you as an attractive employer.
- Test ideas or products. A blog is informal where people can leave a comment and the blog can provide you with a measure of value. Publish an idea and see whether does it generate interest of others
Types of Corporate Blogs
External blogs:
Sales Blogs
- Purpose: To market or sell products or services, make citizens aware of public services, get donations from charities and others.
- Blogger: The organization itself or more specifically individuals within it who are writing in behalf of the organization.
- Target groups: Potential customers or citizens who are directly involved with the publishing organization, or those who want to achieve the purpose above.
Relationship blogs
- Purpose: To create, uphold, and strengthen relationships.
- Blogger: The organization itself or specifically individuals who are writing in behalf of the organization.
- Target groups: Often smaller or more specified than sales blog. For example, support blogs for a particular product.
- Purpose: To strengthen the brand and profile of the publishing organization or individuals within it.
- Blogger: Not necessary the organization itself. If supported by the organization, individual employees' or executive blogging, can be viewed as a branding blog. The same goes for blogs that are not apparently connected to the organization.
- Target groups: Same as relationship and sales blogs
Internal blogs
Knowledge blogs
- Purpose: To give employees information and insights relating t their work assignments, news, business intelligents and many more.
- Blogger: The organization itself through one or more designated bloggers, or potentially all employees through a entirely open blog publishing model.
- Target group: All employees with a targeted interest.
- Purpose: To provide a woking team with a tool for research, collaboration and discussion.
- Blogger: The team
- Target group: The team
- Purpose: To strenghthen organizational culture. Typically through informal of social or non-work related character.
- Blogger: The organization itself, through one or more designated bloggers, and potentially all employees through an entirely open blog publishing model.
- Targer group: All employees as employees, and not professionals (developers, managers, and so on)
Reference links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/corporate_blog
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