Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

Blogs were born from the need to easily publish personal voices online. Blogs, by the nature of the medium, encourage casual banter and informal language. Unlike Web sites, which are crafted and branded and carefully planned out to be "on message," the daily journal format of a blog produces more vulnerability from its authors. In marketing terms, a blog can bring a human personality to a faceless company, which can create a connection between the corporation and the client. This can lead to deeper loyalty and richer feedback.




A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. A conversation going on the company, for internal communication or for community building.
There is scope – even if limited – for using corporate blogs.
For example, a company could keep a customer relationship blog as a forum for discussing products. CEO blogs can be used as an instrument for business agenda-setting or image-building. Before a corporate blog is established the responsible parties must address various strategic issues in order to decide on the practicality of the tool:

1. Is a blog a good fit for the company, its targets and its culture?

As blogs can sometimes be very provocative, they may not be compatible
with a company’s image.

2. As regards content, limitations arise – especially for listed companies.
The content of a blog has to comply with legal and regulatory standards.
From the reader’s standpoint, this substantially dims the attractiveness of
CEO blogs in particular.

Even if companies decide against running a corporate blog, the topic should
stay on their agenda with a view to developments going forward. Companies
should keep track of how their image fares in the “blogosphere”, the new
communications arena. This is underpinned by the argument that
substantial reputational risks can emerge if the companies misjudge the
rapidly formed opinions in the blogosphere.

In companies employees will inevitably start blogging as private individuals
one day. For this reason, companies require a clear blogging policy.
Besides setting guidelines for employees blogging privately, it should also set
out rules saying how employees are allowed to blog on behalf of the
company.

5 most popular corporate blog:



1. Yahoo!



2. Dell



3. General Motors



4. Google



5. Kodak