SHARE

The Benefits of Corporate Blogging

Do you have bloggers within your company? In today’s economy, you can have incredible marketing for your company for free rather than spending an enormous marketing budget. How is this possible? Corporate blogging. Google does it. Microsoft does it. Why aren’t you doing it? Some of the most influential CEOs in the world blog because […]

Written By

Steven Warren

Sep 9, 2005

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More

Do you have bloggers within your company? In today’s economy, you can have incredible marketing for your company for free rather than spending an enormous marketing budget.

How is this possible? Corporate blogging. Google does it. Microsoft does it. Why aren’t you doing it? Some of the most influential CEOs in the world blog because they know how powerful it is. Let’s unlock this secret.

How can you benefit from promoting corporate blogging within your company? Depending on the company or your business model, corporate blogging can help your company feel more human to the world and it is a way for your company to become intertwined with the Internet community.

If your corporate blog gains popularity, you could have thousands of people subscribing to your feeds. This can equate to instant success and popularity of your products.

Passion, Not Hype

When blogging, be honest and forthright. Don’t just blog about your products with a PR spin. Let your personality shine through when you blog. That is the key to successful corporate blogging. Leave all the sales pitchy stuff to the million-dollar marketing budget. Use the blog to capture your audience with your personality and your passion for what you do.

Passion sells. People will read and follow you if you are passionate and really love what you are writing about. A passionate blog will reach more people than any high-dollar ad campaign.

So now you’re hooked and can see the benefits of corporate blogging, but don’t know how to start, right? If all else fails and you are still not sure what direction to go in, learn from some of the master bloggers such as HP blogs, Google blogs, and Microsoft blogs. Pay close attention to how they use their passion for what they do to ignite others toward their vision of next-generation computing.

Set Boundaries

Not only should upper management blog, but you should encourage your employees to blog. When you encourage your employees to blog, a ripple effect will take place that will buzz on the Internet. You will get PR for your products instantaneously and with more than 10 million people blogging each day and numbers growing, you can really put your products out there. For example GM Blogs get hundreds of thousand of hits per day. How cool is that?

There is a caveat, though. You need to set boundaries and have a corporate blogging policy for your employees. You do not want them revealing proprietary information or any other details. We have all read about one specific person at Google who was released directly or indirectly for blogging about Google. It was a total disaster and having a clearly defined blogging policy in your corporate handbook will prevent these occurrences from happening.

Another individual known as “Queen of the Sky” was released from a major airline carrier for posting inappropriate photos. In any event, not having a corporate blogging policy allows your employees to cross the line even if they do not have those intentions. Do yourself a favor and create a blogging policy before promoting blogging within the ranks.

Once you have a blogging policy created and you release it within your company, sit back awhile and watch the excitement grow as you allow your partners and employees to share their passions with others. Join the blogging revolution today. You won’t be sorry.