More Curious Than Worried

Business Communication (pt 3): Two Examples of Corporate Blogs

This is part 3 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 third and final part of my assignment asks me to research and identify two companies that are effectively using blogs to communicate with their employees or with their customers.

While looking through different blogs, the one constant I noticed in all good blogs is enthusiasm. The two blogs I’ve decided to highlight show great enthusiasm for their company.

Randy’s Journal, Boeing – http://boeingblogs.com/randy/

Randy’s Journal is a blog written by Randy Tinseth, Vice President of Marketing for Boeing. He posts a blog about twice a week, but he only posts about subjects that are relevant to Boeing’s newest planes. The site has a very simple layout with the a column to the right of the posts with a calendar to show when the latest blogs were posted, a search field and a welcome section with a link to a page that tells you about Randy. I cannot understate the importance of telling your readers about the author! People read blogs, not only because of the content, but also because of the people who write them. There is also sections with site navigation links, links to Boeing sites, links to aviation interests and a section to make subscribing to the blog easy.

Randy’s audience consists of prospective clients, current clients, others in the airline industry, as well as aviation enthusiasts. His conversational style appeals to the aviation enthusiasts, but is not too casual to worry clients and others in the industry. He doesn’t just talk about what is new and exciting at Boeing. He mentions his travels and makes the reader feel like they are traveling with him to the different Boeing marketing events. There are also pictures and/or video in every post. The pictures and video aren’t just the professional marketing images, they are also candid pictures of the author at the events. This makes the blog more personal, which makes it more interesting. Very few people would want to read his this blog if it was just a copy of Boeing’s press releases. His enthusiasm and writing style make this blog worth reading.

Comcast Voices, Comcast – http://blog.comcast.com/

Comcast Voices is a blog that allows Comcast employees to announce and talk about Comcast products and services as well as news that affects Comcast and their customers. The timing of the posts vary because it is authored by many different Comcast employees. The site has a simple navigation bar at the top with links to the blog’s home page, archives, about page, media gallery and help. The column to the right of the posts has a lot of information and is, understandably, a little cluttered. The color scheme of the site helps keep most of the reader’s focus on the actual blog postings though. At the top of the column is a link for customer and reader feedback. Below that is a link to Comcast’s customer support page and links to subscribe to the site. Following that is sections for featured media, and lists of authors, categories, key words, previous posts and other sites the reader may be interested in.There is also a gadget that shows the latest tweets by Comcast’s Twitter account which you can follow at http://twitter.com/ComcastCares.

One of the things I like best about this blog is that at the beginning of every post it shows the name of the author with a link to their page, the author’s title in the company and the topic that is being covered in the post. The author pages are written by the authors and have a short professional history as well as personal information and a picture. This is great because it makes it feel more personal! As a Comcast employee, this blog would be a great way to highlight products, issues and news that affects your department, your company and especially your customers. It’s also a great way to show your knowledge and enthusiasm for your job, which is never a bad thing for a supervisor to see. As a customer, this blog shows that Comcast is run by people and not just by policies. It’s also a great way to talk with Comcast employees about general issues. The blog does a good job at making sure customers know where to go if they have a specific problem with their account.

I found both of these blogs from a list on the Fortune 500 Blog Wiki on Socialtext.net. This wiki is a great resource listing blogs by Fortune 500 companies as well as reviews about those blogs.

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.

Business Communication (pt 1): How Many Companies Use Blogs?

This is part 1 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.

The first section of my assignment asks me to locate and report statistical data about how many companies have blogs and use blogs. You would think with all the social media gurus out there, this information would be everywhere! Not so. Finding out how many companies use blogs has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

According to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki on Socialtext.net, only 78 companies that make up the Fortune 500 have used blogs to communicate with their customers.  That’s only 15.6%! With the rising popularity of companies using other forms of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, I’m surprised that the number of Fortune 500 companies with blogs is so low.

Technocrati’s (http://www.technocrati.com) State of the Blogosphere 2009 does a great job of analyzing the different reasons people and business use blogs, but trying to figure out out the number of blogs is, well, impossible. Their data comes from a survey of 2,828 bloggers as well as data from Lijit’s (http://www.lijit.com) 11,000 active bloggers and those bloggers’ 2.5 million connections. From what Technocrati found, only 13% of blogs are for the purpose of benefiting a business. Out of that 13%, only 4% of those blogs are for businesses other than the self-employed.

Blogging is still primarily done by people, such as myself, who blog only for the purpose of getting our thoughts and ideas into the public realm.

Week in Review: March 24, 2009

It’s nice to finally get through a relatively normal week at the new house. And it’s REALLY nice to get this posted on time for the first time in 3 weeks.

Things I Think I Liked

• Had my birthday/St. Patrick’s Day party at our house. Lotsa fun and lotsa beer.
• Meeting some cool people on Twitter.
• I really want to see this: Badass cop car of the near-future.
• Ordered my new motherboard and processor for my desktop so I can geek out with friends better. Thanks Dan!
• My new neighbor, Mike, is a cool guy.
• Chevy started production of the new Camaro.
• Found Splinter Cell for the XBox. Now I can turn my XBox into XBMC …as soon as I find the cables for it.
• Flowers are starting to spring up in our backyard.

Things I Think I Didn’t Like

• WiFi should be a free service! You hear me Starbucks!!
• Ashlynn’s leg went all tingly Saturday morning, but was better by Monday so we couldn’t get the doc to look at it. So frustrating!
• Is there anyone who likes the new Facebook home page? I don’t.
• I had to struggle through 3 REALLY slow nights at work. Good for citizens, but boring as all hell for me.
• Spent at least 3 days updating my newly installed Windows XP. Installing Ubuntu has spoiled me.
• Dealing with dozens of towed vehicles at work due to greedy tow companies!
• Hearing about police officers getting killed hits home a lot more when I work with cops all the time.

Things I Think I Think

• As I get older I care more about having friends and family around for my birthday than gifts.
• I’m gonna have to do a stand-alone post about Twitter.
• People involved in social media really seem to enjoy talking about people involved in social media.

This Week Made Me Wonder…

• How many devices can I connect my phone to at once via Bluetooth? Right now I’m listening to a podcast on my phone with my Bluetooth headset and loading a podcast on my phone from my laptop via Bluetooth.
• Would Englewood let us set up a Twitter account for the police?
• It’s getting easier and easier to find stuff to post on this weekly blog. Are these posts getting to long?

Things to look forward to

• Hanging out with my half of the wedding party tomorrow night and getting measured for tuxes.
• Finding a furry, fluffy, feline friend for family fun. (This bullet was brought to you by the letter ‘F’)
• Installing my new motherboard and processor!