week 6 ~ Corporate blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blogging is occurred when a company creates a blog for achieving its business objectives, and it also used for internal and external communication. For internal communication, organization used it as a part of company Intranets and it also helps the organization to promote the sharing of information of work-related matters for the employee conveniences. Organizations use the corporate blogging as a medium to distribute information and inform on the current happenings to all the employees.

For external communication, corporate blogging also is an effective way to use to communicate with the public, which include the clients, media, and customer, especially when all of them come from different places or country. Organization can use this blog to conduct the public relations activities, public can post their opinion about the company’s new product and services in the blog.

There have some successful corporate blog, which are:
1. Kodak's Ofoto.com: Ofoto Blog
- It is used to get feedback and resolve issues with Brownie, a new beta Mac application (found via BeConnected)
2. PerceptionAnalyzer: Dial.log blog
- It has a nice mix of posts on their product and on relevant news & information for their target audience

Pros of corporate blog:

• Company can directly communicate with customers, suppliers, and employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy and reach more employees with a single message
• Be more accessible and give the writer an opportunity to answer critics in a controlled forum
• Create a searchable archive of thoughts and ideas
• Employees' questions and feedback will be permanently recorded on a blog

Cons of corporate blog:

• Poor written blogs can look fake, they might reveal incompetence on the part of the writer
• The writing can be difficult unless the CEO loves to write (in which case this becomes a positive)
• Ill-judged comment could be seized upon the media, investor and related party
• Puts the CEO “out there” and writing ability and though process will be scrutinized

written by ~siew wan~