Business Communication (pt 2): Advantages and Disadvantages of Corporate Blogs

This is part 2 of 3 in a series of blog posts talking about corporate use of blogs. It’s a way for me to get extra credit for my Business Communication course and add what is hopefully valuable content to the internet.

This part of the assignment asks me to locate information and report about the advantages and disadvantages of using blogs for business purposes.

A blog by itself is mostly pointless. Blogging for the sake of blogging is like driving without a destination. It may feel good to just drive, but without a destination you’re basically wasting gas and time. You can get away with this kind of blogging on a personal blog. I don’t really have a purpose for my blog. so if I want to write about hockey today, international politics tomorrow, then video games the next day that’s perfectly acceptable. A business blog, on the other hand, needs to have some sort of purpose. Is blogging part of your marketing and promotion plan? Are you blogging to gain credibility? What do you hope to gain from your blog?

Advantages

As with just about anything in a business, a blog benefits from a clear vision and purpose. Once you figure out that purpose, you can start reaping the rewards of your blog. Some of the rewards of blogging are:

Cheap, Easy Publicity - Without spending gobs of money on ad space and Public Relations your brand and your company can easily become well known because of your blog. I would’ve never known about Duct Tape Marketing, a company that creates products and workshops to help small businesses market themselves, without their Small Business Marketing Blog.
Instant Feedback – Want to know what current and prospective customers want from your business? Encourage feedback and interaction in your blog posts and the feedback will start coming in. People are more likely to respond to blog posts because of the casual nature of blogs.
Personality – The larger the company, the more people are going to think of it as buildings and products and policies and not as people. One of the easiest ways to do this is by allowing trusted employees to start blogs. Sun Microsystems has taken this idea further by allowing ANY Sun employee to create a blog on http://blogs.sun.com.
Community – Creating content on your blog and commenting on others’ blogs is a great way to build an online community that shares your interests. As a business blog, it’s a great way to start and build on relationships with prospective and current clients and partners.

Disadvantages

A blog is a very public entity. Care must be taken to ensure the blog reflects well on your company. A poorly written or maintained blog may be the only impression some people have of your company.

Cheap, Easy Publicity – Yes, this was also listed as an advantage. How can this be both? Imagine everything you say can be heard by anyone with a computer. Imagine everything you say is also archived in detail. Now remember that everything you say isn’t intelligent and insightful. Sometimes what you say can be incorrect, offensive or insensitive. Due to the conversational tone of most blogs, this can be an easy thing to trip over.
Constant Maintenance - When a blog is not updated correctly and constantly, it doesn’t reflect well on the author or on the company that sponsors the blog. A blog is not something you can just set up once, then forget about. Blog readers expect timely and informative posts.
Dealing with Private Information – A blog is a great way for a company to let everyone know what is going on. And I mean EVERYONE: Customers, employees, partners, investors, regulators, competitors, etc. While a blog does a great job at making your company seem more transparent and open, you don’t want to be too transparent. It could get your company into a lot of trouble.
Poor Public Perception - Gaining credibility takes time and effort while losing that credibility can happen almost instantaneously and takes little or no effort. The only thing blog readers have to judge you are your words. Using proper grammar, punctuation and spelling can go a long ways in building your credibility. Too many misspelled words, non-working links or accidental offensiveness can easily take a toll on your company’s public perception.