Why every company should have a blog
January 11, 2008 – 6:31 pmDo you exist online? It’s a question that any company should be ask themselves. There’s a catch for companies, though. “Existing” online doesn’t mean having a homepage or e-commerce site. It means having an authentic personality.
How does a company have an authentic personality online? With over 70 million blogs across the globe accounting for ~1.5 million posts a day, the clear answer is a Blog. A medium that is fast growing, highly active, and known to be a platform for conversation. A blog becomes your company’s personality online while your homepage is the place to shop. More importantly, it becomes how people really feel they connect to you.
As blogging continues to grow, it’s quite simple: if there’s no underline under your name, you don’t exist. People have no way to engage. You’re invisible. It’s the underline rule.
For example:
“Man, my HP laptop is crapping out. I would love to get my hands on one of Dell’s awesome looking new laptops, like the XPS M1710.”
And
“Apple could sure get their act together by not charging me $30 for a service phone to fix a manufacturing defect.”
See, I think companies have become comfortable with the homepage trend that grew from the mid/late 90’s. If a company wanted to exist online, they had to have a homepage. Considering the history of homepages for a minute, first personal homepages (hence “home”) were all the craze, rapidly growing a la Geocities and similar. You were cool if you had a homepage (since then it’s obviously evolved). After all this progress and growth was made on the personal homepage front, companies hopped on board creating their own homepage. This gave companies an easy, impersonal web presence selling their products online.
Since then, the personal homepage dynamics have evolved into blogging, a platform that involves authentic conversations with authentic people. Suddenly it’s no longer good enough to just have an online “presence” (your little shopping mall). Now you actually have to have a personal presence online. At least, if you want to have an underline… and why wouldn’t you? You’re invisible without it. That little underline brings people, customers, potential products, and evangelists, all to you. When I say you, I mean you, the people who make up your company. Most importantly, it makes you visible in a conversation that is already happening.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand where marketers are coming from when they say a company should listen first and engage second. They are right on about listening first. But doesn’t part of listening involves letting people know you’re listening? We do this in communication by head nods, mimicking body motions, and making eye contact. Being invisible doesn’t let that happen. It is important for your company to properly execute a blogging strategy. The space corporations are playing in when it comes to blogging, however, is authenticity, and I don’t think I am far off when I say, in this space, authenticity trumps strategy every time.
But I am curious. What do you all think? Do you think a blog fits all companies in some form? Do certain social tools match particular companies? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
3 Responses to “Why every company should have a blog”
Before I left my corporate job to join Brazen Careerist, I was in the midst of assisting my boss with the creation of a blog network for all executive-level employees.
I think blogs within companies are a great way for high-level employees to connect with people at all levels of the company. In fact, why not use it to recruit and retain young people as well?
That’s the big problem, right?
I was lucky to catch the beginning of the social media revolution in my company, and I hope more companies take heed to what your saying and follow suit.
By Ryan Paugh on Jan 12, 2008
I think that either way, it is helpful. But, if you look at communities like the Ubuntu (or other similar linux communities), there is a special sense of belonging you get when the product makes it easy to find information.
I think that if more companies would invest the time and money into the seemingly guerrilla style of the web-world, they’d see a better following.
By Andrew Benton on Jan 14, 2008
@Ryan: A great additional comment. While I was mainly addressing the need for companies to adopt external blogs, the importance and effect of blogs internally can also be of great benefit. I know of some companies, actually, that have taken the internal blog initiative and externalized it. That is, when it comes to when meetings will be scheduled, what they go over, and so forth, they post it publicly on their blog for the viewing of their fellow employee’s (and others).
@Andrew: Being involved in providing pertinent information for a particular product is always a great way to create community. In fact, there is a community for TiVo that was created and has succeeded entirely on that principle.
Thanks for joining in the discussion!
By Nathan Snell on Jan 15, 2008