iUPLOAD CASE STUDY

iUpload.com is a Toronto-area based software company. They were founded in 1998, their products manage website content and blog publishing. Every iUpload employee has a blog located at iUplog.com.

iUpload's Weblog:
http://www.iuplog.com/

Blogs are a very big part of iUpload, because about eighteen months ago they introduced blogging software for corporate bloggers to their already successful software suite. So not only does every employee have a blog, but iUpload is heavily involved in the blogosphere because part of their business is corporate blogging.

We corresponded with Robin Hopper, founder and CEO of iUpload. We asked him a few questions about the impact that the corporate blogs have had on iUpload in general.

"Blogs have become a staple for communication here," Robin told me. "All staff blog and much of that content is available for public consumption and that has done a lot in terms of good will with customers - several of our customers contribute to those blogs as well which has served us well."

Their blogs have also helped get iUpload involved in a wider community. "Many of our staff members have become to be considered experts on topics because of their posts and have been drawn in as contributors to other communities," explained Robin.

We browsed around through the iUplog employee blogs, and found a lot of interesting things. Different employees used their blogs in completely different ways.

Anita Zuzul uses her blog to write about the products and communicate with customers. She takes ideas from customers and posts them on her blog with her responses to their ideas. She also picks a user of the month and profiles them. Robin Dindayal also writes about iUpload's products, industry news, and links to things he finds interesting or cool. Robin also includes industry humor and witty wordings to draw readers to his blog on a regular basis. Other iUplog bloggers like Robin Hopper, Bob Royce, and David Carter blog about tech and product news.

Conclusion

Measuring a blog's success can be difficult. Robin Dindayal has seen a lot of successes through his blog. Within the first week of launching his blog, he was able to gather feedback about a product from customers, and this response increased both link popularity and sales. Another iUpload blogger, Aaron Flemming, also saw major results within the first week of starting his blog.

While the iUpload blogs do not get an abundance of comments, according to iUpload they do have a substantial amount of readers. Most of their blogs have a Google page ranking of four while iUpload. com and iUplog.com both have page rankings of five.

In spite of the lack of comments in comparison to the blogs in other companies, it seems that does not hurt the popularity of their blogs. Perhaps some blogs for major companies such as Microsoft and IBM get more comments because they are more established brands.