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July 25, 2005Blogs Publishing New Content or Publishing The Same Content?
Another way to publish content and ideas was the top answer to question eight in the corporate blogging survey; this was the question "please rate your blog's impact on the following factors in your company".
I was wondering why the respondents to the survey thought it was important for their companies to have another way to publish content and ideas? Did they think this answer means that companies did not have the place to publish certain ideas and content, or that a blog is just another place to publish the same type of content a company might publish on their corporate website? I queried a few of the respondents again.
Do you think this answer means that companies did not have the place to publish certain ideas and content?
Christine Halvorson of Stonyfield Farms said, “This would be my choice. Let me elaborate: The blogs have become the editorial column for our company. It’s where we can express opinions and convey our company’s mission in a way different from traditional marketing, advertising, or public relations venues. It has replaced “chat rooms� and “discussion boards� as a place where consumers can talk to each other or to us. It is also different and wonderful because it is more easily and quickly updated than other website content, so in that way it serves a content management function when we want to talk about something QUICKLY!�
Joseph DePalma, of Vertora, Inc said, “A corporate website is somewhat canned and everyone has the same thing. The blog allows for personality and most importantly, UNFINISHED thought. If you publish unfinished thought on your corporate website, you'll be clubbed to death by the industry and your customers. With a blog, it's set up for it and that combined with your personality, it brings attention to those ideas and new content.�
Janet Johnson, Marqui said “we don't publish the same type of content on our blog as on our website - by design. People look to blogs to be different from web sites, I think. And we're using our blog to speak WITH vs. TO our constituents. We launched the company into the US through the blogosphere, and have had plenty of practical experience with the values and pitfalls of negotiating the blogosphere in seven short months! It has been one wild ride.�
Shawn Lea of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said “It's an easier way to publish ideas.
I turned a weekly e-newsletter into a blog - and now our members get daily updates. I continue to send weekly reminders of what's been posted for the old-school folks. But the members that do want their news everyday can browse by category, comment, etc.
(http://mhanewsnow.typepad.com and http://mhanewsnow.typepad.com/executive )
I also turned an internal employee newsletter that was published in
Acrobat and e-mailed to employees into a blog. Now members can see
pictures and read updates about the staff too.
(http://mhanewsnow.typepad.com/staff)� slea@mhanet.org
Farida Hasanali of APQC said, “Answer: If I had to pick I would say the latter for sure. But the reason why organizations could use another publishing medium is in part due to saturation of existing media and in part due to a change in how we work. An analogy that best describes this is television. Product companies have realized that the effectiveness of their television advertising has dropped considerably. Are people watching less TV? I wish! The availability of on demand television through Tivo and DVRs have led to a drop in "commercials" watching. People record their shows and fast forward through the commercials. So product companies have had to think of other ways of getting the message out and an example of that which everyone recognizes is the partnership with TV shows like The Apprentice. Pontiac sold more cars and Burger King sold more burgers because the show used those products in their competitions.
On a similar note, how we work has changed. We are more collaborative now than ever before. We have access to more information, we have access to higher data speeds, we need more information these days to deal with the global environment than we did before. These changes are leading to the search for more effective means of communicating and blogs is one of them. Its low barrier to entry and ease of use makes it an easy tool for people to collaborate and share. In my opinion Web sites and Intranets are still effective mediums for sharing information but I think they are not getting the credit they deserve because people may been jaded from past experiences of sites that were either not populated with content or stale sites where content never changed.�
The answers below explain that blogging is a way to publish the same type of content found on a website, but there are advantages to publishing the same content on a blog.
David Paull from MSInteractive said “Publishing to my corporate website means getting content to my webmaster and having him get around to publishing it for me. With our blog, I post what I want, when I want and it's instantly out there. Eliminating that layer is important to me.�
I was particularly interested in what Farida had to say about the need to do blogging because of the changing way in which customers gather information in today’s online society. I believe this is very true and also leads me to research in more depth on how customers are finding product information through the web at the moment. According to the Pew Research on people and the internet 27% of Internet users read a blog in 2004, but what percentage of Internet users were influenced by a blog? That’s a question that’s hard to measure as people may or may not know if they have been influenced. Actions are how easier to measure, but how do we determine the current ROI on blogging compared to Search engine marketing ads or other advertising mediums. Many of the blogging survey respondents stated they received a lot of benefits. Maybe the chart I need to develop is a chart that shows the number of sales developed by a company across all of their marketing efforts that includes a slice for blogging.
It was also particularly interesting to read Christine Halvorson of Stonyfield Farm’s response. I was slightly confused about Stonyfield’s use of forum’s Christine clarified and said, “We have replaced chat rooms and discussion boards. Not necessarily that the consumer prefers blogs. We just eliminated those other options. Because 1) they didn’t see much activity 2) hard to moderate 3) blogs are more fun!�
Posted by johncass at July 25, 2005 4:30 PM
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