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June 30, 2005MIT Survey On Blogging, Social Networks and more
I just took the MIT blog survey, the study group at MIT is doing research into social networks, e-mail use, blog use and IM use. At least that’s what I took away from the questions on the survey. Massachusetts is something of an outstanding center for blogging, search engine optimization and Internet marketing. As one of the largest technology centers in the country this should come as no surprise. But with a large number of major universities in the Boston area, the state has some advantages when it comes to many people thinking about a subject. The Berkman Center for Law & Society is one such place of debate about the cultural effects of the web.
Posted by johncass at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 20052005 Corporate Blogging Survey Results
3:48pm the Backbone Media Corporate Blogging survey results are now live. We have developed both a blogging website and an adobe pdf for the results of the blogging survey. We’d welcome your comments, by posting on this blog. We have found lots of other issues to explore from the results of the survey, we hope that the results will spark many new good conversations about Corporate blogging.
Posted by johncass at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Comment policies
I came across many different "comment policies" (as well as "contact policies") in the blogs I looked through, particularly in the Microsoft blogs. Most of the comment policies are pretty standard (no spam, no harrassment, no bad language).
Suzanne Cook, who works at Microsoft in product design and development, wrote a comment policy about how to contact technical support, because she was getting contacted by too many people seeking customer support.
Another Microsoft blogger, KC Lemson, wrote a more detailed comment policy, also listing guidelines and expectations for people who leave comments on her blog.
Posted by kristine at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005One Third of Journalists Look at blogs
EMarketer reported on a new study from Euro RSCG Magnet done in partnership with Columbia University finds 28% of journalists rely on blogs for information about the news. Though only 1% of journalists think blogs are a credible source. Journalists might not see blogs as credible, however they do read them. This report demonstrates the growing importance of blogs to online PR.
Posted by johncass at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2005Last minute edits
We were going to release the survey on Friday, however we are going to delay until next week. We just finished the final version on Thursday. In addition to making a pdf of the 70 or so page report, we have also build a website. We have some last minute final double checks to do, but should have the report out early next week.
I attended the American Marketing Association blogging workshop all day on Friday. Forty-three people attended the workshop the event was a success. I was a moderator on the final panel discussion. Several of the attendees took the survey, and one of the attendees was involved in the development of a case study.
As incoming 2005/6 President of the Boston chapter I was glad to support the event.
Posted by johncass at 12:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005Thank You Corporate Bloggers
I'd like to thank everyone who dedicated their valuable time to taking this survey. We're really pleased with the quality of your responses (especially the thoughtful remarks that you provided in the open-ended questions). We know it was a bit long but we think you will find that your time has provided some really interesting data that will make for interesting reading for anyone looking to learn more about the benefits of corporate blogging. We're very excited to share the results with you later this week. I wish you all the best!
Posted by stephenbackbone at 3:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Trackbacks
Trackbacks are an excellent way to form a blogging community. It's a way to see what posts you have inspired, and show people that you are reading what they're writing. It's a non-intrusive way of linking to something you've written about something somebody else has written.
For those of you who don't know, trackbacks work like this:
1) You read an interesting blog post, and decide you want to write something about that in your own blog.
2) After posting about it in your own blog, go to original article and search for their article’s trackback URL.
3) Insert that trackback URL into your own blog management system trackback notification system.
4) A notification to the original blog will insert a link to your post to appear on the original blog article.
5) The blogger of that original post will often receive a notification as well, via email, about how blogged about their blog, and sent a trackback.
However, some blogging software does not support trackbacks. Here is a link so you can do it manually:
http://www.forret.com/tools/trackback.asp
Some are skeptical of manual trackbacks because some spammers use them when they aren't actually linking to that person's blog post. However, when used correctly, they can be a good substitute if your blogging software doesn't offer trackbacks.
So, utilize the trackback function, everybody! They can come in very handy.
Posted by kristine at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2005Things I've learned from the survey
Our survey has been closed for two days now, and right now we are working on compiling all of the data and results for it. I've learned a lot about the corporate blogosphere from the survey results, viewing so many blogs, and corresponding with bloggers. Here are some things that I've learned:
- Have an RSS feed! Having an RSS feed is a key to having a successful blog. If you don't have an RSS feed, you run the risk of losing readers.
- Most bloggers will be happy to correspond with you if you want to talk about their blog, especially if you approach them in a personal manner.
- Some smaller and newer companies use blogs as their main page. Could this become a trend in the future?
- There is a lot of unspoken blog etiquette, in regards to trackbacks, commenting, and contacting the blogger. The main trend is to be personal; otherwise it is easy to assume that you are contacting them in effort to plug your own blog.
- There are many great corporate blogs out there, but some are difficult to find. Link to your favorite blogs!
Posted by kristine at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005Main Backbone Media Corporate Blogging Survey Closed
The Backbone Media corporate blogging survey is now closed, thanks to everyone who participated. We will be busy on writing the paper on the survey with case studies. To receive the survey results subscribe to our RRS feed, or send us send us a message through our contact us form.
You can take a shorter version of the master survey by clicking on the express survey link.
Posted by johncass at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Comment Spam
I deleted five comment this morning, all spam comments from a spam bot. Our blog must be doing well to receive spam comments so quickly.
Posted by johncass at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 11, 2005Thanks For Taking the Survey!
Thanks to all of our survey respondents for taking the survey so far, we could put this survey together without you. From the survey I hope to develop ideas about how to use blogs for companies, I think we have developed some data from the survey, and I am looking forward to sharing the data with everyone.
Thanks Steven for your comment, I understand that unless we share the information it is not possible for Backbone Media to gain insight into the current state of corporate blogging.
Just a reminder, if any survey respondents wished to stay anonymous we respect your privacy and will not reveal any identifying information.
Posted by johncass at 7:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005Blog Survey Banner
Thanks go to Steven Streight for the idea of making a banner for the blog survey. If you would like to post the banner, here's banner and the script below.
<a href="http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/" target="_blank"><img
src=http://www.backbonemedia.com/images/survey.gif width="148" height="108"
border="0"></a>
Posted by johncass at 3:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Companies who participated in the blogging survey
Here is a list of some of the participants of the survey, to give you an idea of the variety of companies that took the survey. These are the companies who have given us permission to identify that someone from that company took the survey. (We wouldn't release any of that info without permission!)
Annie's Homegrown -- maker of organic and all-natural Mac n'Cheese, Pasta and Snacks.
APQC -- an internationally recognized non profit organization, providing expertise in benchmarking and best practices research
BlogSavant -- one of the world's first blog consulting companies with a live blog consultant.
Bloomberg Marketing -- an Atlanta-based strategic marketing consultancy
Breukelman Kubista Group -- a full service marketing agency located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Chicago Transit Authority -- CTA serves Chicago and 40 suburbs with its extensive train lines and bus routes
Conference Calls Unlimited -- Feature-rich web conferencing at discount prices.
Digital Grit -- a full-service interactive marketing firm headquartered in Boonton, New Jersey.
Educational Directories Unlimited, Inc. -- follow the stories of three college students as they blog their experiences overseas.
emm-ess consultants -- communications and PR news
Estate Legacy Vaults -- Helping people take care of the business of their lives more easily and securely.
Gourmet Station -- a trusted source for unique gourmet gifts.
IBM -- the largest and most advanced source of information technology, hardware, software and services anywhere.
Indium -- supplier of electronics assembly materials, including solder pastes, solder preforms, fluxes, Pb-Free solder alloys, underfill materials, die-attach materials, and more.
International Association of Business Communicators -- the premier international knowledge network for professionals engaged in strategic business communication management.
Kranz Communications -- a Boston copywriter for direct marketing copywriting and other copy writing services.
Marqui -- Communication Management Suite (cms) for content management.
MaxPPS -- a world leader in the design and deployment of maximum level physical protection systems.
Mississippi Hospital Association -- a statewide trade organization that assists member hospitals in effectively serving the health care needs of Mississippi through advocacy, representation, information, education and services.
MS Interactive -- the worldwide standard technology for collecting data from groups.
Pheedo -- creates tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize their weblogs and content feeds with simple, yet robust software and services.
The Presentation Business -- help for making speeches, public speaking and presentations.
Quest@Kingsway -- a group of Christians in Seffner, FL who are trying to figure out what real spirituality looks like in a modern context.
Quorum PR -- a public relations agency based in Italy.
Radiant Marketing Group -- a business blog consulting and internet marketing boutique based in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Salesforce.com -- affordable hosted CRM solutions for enterprise, mid-market, and small business companies.
Security Awareness -- Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless. The Security Awareness Blog gives computer security tips and tricks to government, corporations and home users.
Strategic Marketing -- for a Marketing Strategy with SEO (Selling Effectiveness Optimization) for Manufacturing and Service companies
Sun Microsystems-- A blog by Identity Management, LDAP and Information Security architect, Rohan Pinto.
Tulip Computers -- Located in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, Tulip makes high-end Intel based workstations.
Versant Solutions -- strategic solutions in branding and marketing.
Vertora, Inc. -- building remarkable brands.
Voce Communications -- a strategic communications consultancy providing award-winning communications counsel to leading corporations in technology, consumer, and financial services markets.
Posted by kristine at 9:27 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Corporate Blogging Survey & Case Studies
Fredrik wrote a comment in answer to my earlier post.
“I just came to the logical conclusion that since you don't have enough respondents, it's too early to trust any results yet. I assume that you have set the goal (# of responses) partly based on how many you need to reach statistical validity.�
Last year when I conducted the survey, I just conducted interviews and produced some really great content based on the surveys, I learnt a lot from the experience and it really changed expanded my ideas on all of the values blogs bring to companies. It became less a matter of search engine results and sales, and more a matter of product development and building a strong brand through community.
This year the survey has been much more extensive. Our sampling methods have been to get as many corporate bloggers as possible. It’s been difficult to determine how many corporate blogs exist on the Internet at the moment. Both Kristine’s and my sense is that fewer corporate blogs exist than we expected, when we started the survey in May, that perspective comes from searching for blogs and looking at the lists that exist out on the net.
In addition I am not relying on just the data from the survey; I’ve also been conducting personal interviews with survey respondents and other bloggers I wanted to interview for case studies within the paper we are developing.
One issue around that is that I believe there are very few companies who are really using corporate blogging techniques to their full potential, so as a percentage of the industry I think the general results do actually reflect what is going on in the industry. But I also wanted to include in my case studies some of those particular companies who are furthest developed in their use of corporate blogs, as I believe they have a lot to teach the rest of the industry. I can say I’ve been very happy with the results so far in getting some data that confirms some of the information I discovered last year.
Some of the case studies on how companies are using blogs are unique and therefore will not reflect the general survey results. I suppose this is to be expected; corporate blogging is new, what 2-3 years old. Not every company will be implementing all of the techniques that are available to them, but that’s why I am conducting the survey to learn what value different companies are gaining from corporate blogging, we can then show the different models to the wider community, and each learn from others experiences. I also hoped to identify new techniques, and I can say we are doing that. When we publish the paper, and other articles think of the survey as both the survey you took and the case studies that we developed from direct interviews with bloggers.
Posted by johncass at 8:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 9, 2005Blog entry about our preliminary results
Hans Mestrum wrote a blog entry about our preliminary survey results...
Posted by kristine at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005More on results
Fredrik at Corporateblogging.info wrote a blog post article about the preliminary results. Not sure about the comment about the credibility of the results. We’ve had a good cross section of the corporate blogging community. I wanted to get 100 bloggers for the survey.
Posted by johncass at 3:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Problems With The Zoomerang Survey Engine?
I have had a few people tell me that they had trouble taking the survey, if you have problems it may be browser issues. Check your browser or try taking the survey from another machine. More details below.
Connectivity and other technical problems are often caused by your browser settings for cookies, Active X, JavaScript and cache handling. If you are having connectivity issues in Zoomerang, it may be because your browser settings are not compatible with Zoomerang's requirements. Please make sure your settings match those listed below. Click here http://survey.mt01.com/r5/browser/browser_settings.htm to view detailed instructions, with screen shots, of how to check and adjust these settings. Other things that may affect performance include your firewall settings, the speed of your connection, proxy server settings and anti-virus software.
Proper Settings in Internet Explorer
To check or modify browser settings in Internet Explorer, open your browser and using the menus, go to Tools/Internet Options. Then:
Go the Security tab and click on the Custom Level button.
For the items in the ActiveX Control and Plug-ins section, make sure you have the following settings:
Download signed Active X Controls - PROMPT
Download unsigned ActiveX Controls - DISABLE
Initialize and script ActiveX Controls not marked as safe - DISABLE
Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins - ENABLE
Script ActiveX controls marked safe - ENABLE
For the items in the Cookies section, make sure you have the following settings:
Allow cookies that are stored on your computer - ENABLE
Allow per session cookies - ENABLE
In the Microsoft VM section, set the Java Permissions item to HIGH SAFETY.
Click OK to save any changes you may have made.
Now go back to the General Tab and do the following:
Click the Settings button in the Temporary Internet Files section.
For the item Check for newer versions of stored pages, select Every visit to the page, then click OK.
Now click the Delete Files button and click OK to delete your temporary internet files. These files could be one source of the problem you are having and deleting them is harmless.
Proper Settings in Netscape Navigator
To check or modify browser settings in Netscape, open your browser and using the menus, go to Edit/Preferences. Then:
Click on Advanced and make sure you have the following settings:
Enable Java Script checkbox - selected
Accept all cookes radio button - selected
Now open the Advanced folder by clicking on the + next to it
Click on Cache and make sure the Every time radio button is selected for how often the document in cache is compared to the document on the network (NOTE that this item has a different name/options depending on the version of netscape you have)
Click the Clear Memory Cache button
Click the Clear Disk Cache button
Click OK
If You Still Have Problems
We are aware that older versions of AOL sometimes experience connectivity problems and are working diligently to correct any compatibility issues. If your issues aren't resolved after following the instructions above, submit a request using the Ask a Question tab. Please include the following information about your Zoomerang account, computer system, network and internet connection in the request:
Browser and version (Internet Explorer 5.5, etc.)
How you are connected to the internet (dialup, T1, DSL etc.)
Your Internet Service Provider if not in the office/on T1 (Pacific Bell, etc.)
Your operating system (Windows 2000, Mac SO X, etc.)
The URL of the Survey
The account login under which the survey was created
Screen shot of the error message, if possible
Posted by johncass at 9:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 7, 2005Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results
This is just a small sampling of our results. We want to encourage more corporate bloggers to take the Backbone Media corporate blogging survey, to that objective; we are releasing preliminary results from two survey questions. We’d like to ask you to consider the results and encourage more bloggers to take the survey.
Backbone Media defines a corporate blogger to be someone who works for a company and who runs a blog about their company’s products, services or industry. Backbone Media has contacted over 500 bloggers for the corporate blogging survey. If you fall into the corporate blogging category please consider filling out the survey. Even though a few companies have several hundred if not thousands of blogs listed, not every blog listed is actually all that active from our review of individual blogs. We think that due to the scarcity of actual corporate blogs we have not had as many responses as we envisaged. We have had over 650 people look at the survey, and 85 people have taken the corporate blogging survey, of those respondents, 64 have been bloggers and 19 have been non-bloggers.
Initial Survey Results
The survey results have been displayed in descending order according the average that is highest for each portion of each of the two questions listed. In this way we can determine what was the initial highest priority of bloggers and what factor produced the highest results.
Question: We want to understand the major priorities in starting a corporate blog. Before launching your corporate blog, what role did the following considerations play in your company's decision to start its corporate blog? Please rate each of the following categories according to the scale at the top of the question.
From the survey results it appears getting information or content out to an audience is very important, as is building a community. Surprisingly to me, 'thought leadership' though highly ranked was not the highest priority when a blogger was thinking of launching their blog. Our initial survey results listed 'thought leadership' as the highest priority, and that distinction has declined as more bloggers have taken the survey.
What was at the bottom of the list of priorities was particularly interesting, 'crisis communications' and 'customer registrations' and 'getting interview requests back from journalists'. Overall the results indicate that bloggers wanted to use their blog as a way to reach out and get information to their audience quickly.
| Not a factor | Some | Important | Very Important | Primary reason | Responses | Total Results | Average | |
| 11. Another way to publish content and ideas | 0% | 5% | 11% | 32% | 52% | 62 | 267 | 4.31 |
| 13. Build a community | 3% | 5% | 21% | 24% | 47% | 62 | 252 | 4.06 |
| 8. Thought leadership | 5% | 3% | 19% | 29% | 44% | 62 | 250 | 4.03 |
| 15. A way to get information quickly to customers | 8% | 5% | 11% | 39% | 36% | 61 | 238 | 3.9 |
| 9. A way to get feedback from my customers | 8% | 13% | 21% | 35% | 23% | 62 | 218 | 3.52 |
| 14. Increasing sales | 13% | 10% | 21% | 34% | 23% | 62 | 213 | 3.44 |
| 12. RSS Syndication | 18% | 16% | 19% | 27% | 19% | 62 | 195 | 3.15 |
| 3. Boost search engine positions | 19% | 13% | 21% | 32% | 15% | 62 | 192 | 3.1 |
| 4. Increase link popularity | 16% | 15% | 25% | 33% | 11% | 61 | 188 | 3.08 |
| 2. Gather feedback on a product or service | 15% | 24% | 21% | 31% | 10% | 62 | 184 | 2.97 |
| 1. Customer Service | 26% | 18% | 23% | 27% | 6% | 62 | 168 | 2.71 |
| 10. Respond to negative comments | 35% | 11% | 31% | 19% | 3% | 62 | 151 | 2.44 |
| 5. A way to get interview requests from journalists | 34% | 18% | 34% | 11% | 3% | 62 | 144 | 2.32 |
| 7. I was curious about blogging and wanted to try it | 37% | 21% | 23% | 15% | 5% | 62 | 142 | 2.29 |
| 16. Customer registrations | 43% | 23% | 20% | 5% | 10% | 61 | 132 | 2.16 |
| 6. Crisis communications | 52% | 20% | 21% | 5% | 2% | 61 | 112 | 1.84 |
Table Explanation
Not all of the 64 respondents answered every section of this question. We multiplied the number of answers by the value of the answer, i.e. the number 1 equals ‘not a factor’ and 5 equals ‘primary reason’. The total results were calculated and the table of priorities is ordered by the priority that received the highest number of total results in descending order. We also calculated the average for each priority so that we could account for the differences between the numbers of respondents for each section.
Responses: Indicates the number of survey takers who responded to a particular question.
Total Results: Equals the number of responses for a particular factor rating, multiplied by the rating number. I.e. for question eleven, "11. Another way to publish content and ideas", twenty people responded to the rating 'Very Important' and thirty-two people responded to 'Primary Reason'. We multiplied each number of respondents by either four or five, to produce eighty for ‘'Very Important' and one hundred and sixty for 'Primary Reason'. We then added all of the factors to produce the total result.
Average: The “Total Results’ number was divided by the number of respondents to each part of the question.
Question: Please rate your blogs impact on the following factors in your company.
As indicated by the blogger achieved results question, the results for blogs were not that far from initial blogger priorities. The results from respondents’ blogs do seem to have been better than initial expectations. One interesting difference in initial priority to actual results was ‘increasing sales’. That priority had been more important than boosting search engine rankings and gaining more links than initial expectations, but results indicate that as a factor ‘increasing sales’ achieved less results than 'boosting search engine rankings', 'increasing links', and 'getting product feedback from customers'.
Again PR results were at the bottom of the table in terms of results for both getting journalists to request interviews and crisis communications.
It was also insightful to see the results for RSS Syndication, that factor was rated highly as achieving success for respondents. In fact out of 59 respondents 46% thought their blog had achieved substantial positive results from RSS Syndication efforts.
| It's Hurting | No Apparent Change | Seems to Be Helping | Measured Success | Substantial Positive | Responses | Total Results | Average | |
| 10. Another way to publish content and ideas | 0% | 4% | 19% | 19% | 58% | 57 | 246 | 4.316 |
| 14. A way to get information quickly to customers | 0% | 9% | 16% | 39% | 37% | 57 | 230 | 4.035 |
| 12. Build a community | 0% | 11% | 13% | 41% | 36% | 56 | 225 | 4.018 |
| 7. Thought leadership | 3% | 3% | 17% | 40% | 36% | 58 | 233 | 4.017 |
| 11. RSS syndication | 0% | 14% | 25% | 15% | 46% | 59 | 232 | 3.932 |
| 4. Increase link popularity | 0% | 15% | 27% | 32% | 25% | 59 | 217 | 3.678 |
| 3. Boost search engine positions | 0% | 15% | 31% | 27% | 27% | 59 | 216 | 3.661 |
| 8. A way to get feedback from my customers | 0% | 10% | 38% | 36% | 16% | 58 | 207 | 3.569 |
| 2. Gather feedback on a product or service | 2% | 26% | 23% | 33% | 16% | 57 | 191 | 3.351 |
| 13. Increasing sales | 3% | 29% | 31% | 22% | 14% | 58 | 182 | 3.138 |
| 1. Customer service | 2% | 36% | 32% | 15% | 15% | 59 | 181 | 3.068 |
| 9. Respond to negative comments | 5% | 36% | 31% | 21% | 7% | 58 | 167 | 2.879 |
| 15. Customer registrations | 5% | 37% | 33% | 16% | 9% | 57 | 163 | 2.86 |
| 5. A way to get interview requests from journalists | 5% | 42% | 25% | 19% | 8% | 59 | 167 | 2.831 |
| 6. Crisis communications | 7% | 53% | 19% | 18% | 4% | 57 | 147 | 2.579 |
Table Explanation
Not all of the 64 respondents answered every section of this question. We multiplied the number of answers by the value of the answer, i.e. the number 1 equals ‘It’s hurting’ and 5 equals ‘Substantial Positive’. The total results were calculated and the table of factors is ordered by the factor that received the highest number of total results in descending order. We also calculated the average for each factor so that we could account for the differences between the numbers of respondents for each section, we did see a difference in results between the average and order of total results.
Responses: Indicates the number of survey takers who responded to a particular question.
Total Results: Equals the number of responses for a particular factor rating, multiplied by the rating number. I.e. for question ten, "10. Another way to publish content and ideas", eleven people responded to the rating 'Measured Success' and thirty-three people responded to 'Substantial Positive'. We multiplied each number of respondents by either four or five, to produce forty-four for ‘Measured Success’ and one hundred and sixty-five for 'Substantial Positive'. We then added all of the factors to produce the total result.
Average: The “Total Results’ number was divided by the number of respondents to each part of the question.
Posted by stephenbackbone at 10:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
CTA Blog
A few days ago I wrote about the different uses for corporate blogs. The Chicago Transit Authority is an example of a very cool, less conventional corporate blog. It's still a new blog, but it's got some great information for people in the Chicago area. It has news about Chicago transit, the blogger answers questions from customers, there's information about fares, and it's written in a personable manner.
Check it out! http://www.ctachair.blogspot.com/
Posted by kristine at 9:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 3, 2005Blogging Case Studies
One of the results of the survey is that we expect to write up several case studies on companies in the industry. We are contacting a number of companies who have taken the survey and doing more detailed interviews, we only publish those case studies if a blogger wishes to help with a case study, as the company’s name is mentioned in the case study.
Posted by johncass at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 2, 2005Different kinds of corporate blogs
Corporate blogs can be many different things and serve many different purposes. While most of the corporate blogs I've found were in the high tech industry, namely software companies, I've found a lot of other interesting uses for corporate blogs.
I have found blogs done by real estate agents who post information on local real estate news, homes for sale, and connecting with their community. I have found blogs from companies who have been able to get feedback on a product. I have found blogs that have programmers sharing codes with each other within the company. I have found blogs by older, established, successful companies who have used a blog to market a new product. All of those blogs are great and I love seeing the different uses for them. It really shows how useful blogs can be on different levels and for completely different reasons.
Posted by kristine at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 1, 2005Blogging good Content Requires Quality not Quantity
Great article on business blogging by Patrick Thibodeau, though I would say one thing about the reported number of bloggers by each company. My company has been conducting a survey of the corporate blogging industry, and so we had to develop a list of corporate bloggers. While 1,500 people at Microsoft might have signed up for a blog, not very many of them are very active. Some only have a few articles posted, and those were a number of months ago. Each company does have a quantity of content rich blogs, but the number is a lot less than the 100's or 1000's described in this article.
Starting a blog is easy, but having the discipline to write on a regular basis is difficult. It’s also a matter of finding the right voice. When I was running the business blog for 48hourprint.com I had trouble finding the right voice for the company. I realized over time that the people who should have been blogging were the sales technical support people. The people who our customers always wanted to chat too on the telephone, that’s a good standard to choosing your blogger and for your content. Write about what your customers want to talk about the most, and have the person with the most knowledge either blog or contribute to the blog.
Posted by johncass at 4:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
