Business blogging - Which works better, corporate or employee blogging?
Published April 3rd, 2006 in E-PRI had an interesting discussion with Ed Byrne on our way down to the Galway geek dinner. I brought up the fact that a few people referred to this website as a business blog. I’m not quite sure that I would call it that, given that I don’t run my own business, but it’s obviously not a personal blog either.
Ed raised the point though that he thought employee blogs were more effective than corporate blogs. When people read corporate blogs, there is generally a subtle sense of distrust. It’s generally acknowledged that the public trust ‘people like me’ more than organisations. On top of that employee blogs are often more popular than corporate blogs. I don’t actually know if there’s a corporate Microsoft blog, but I’m well aware of and have read its employees’ blogs such as Robert Scoble.
Ed thinks that when people find a blog they like, they’ll read up about the author and say ‘That Robert Scoble fellow sure is a clever guy, Microsoft must be a good company if they’ve got a guy like him on the books.’
I find it interesting because I wonder how many people are aware that I work for Drury Communications and whether that impacts their impression of the company.
When we finally get around to blogging, would it be better if we set up individual blogs for people to have for themselves, or would it be better if staff contributed to the one site? Personally I like the idea of sticking with a staff blog, what does anyone else think?
Sticking with the subject of business blogging, Annette Clancy of Thinking Out Loud has started her own business blog. Annette is an organisational consultant and I really like the idea of the Interactions business blog because it goes a long way to explaining as to what her day job actually entails. I think the majority of the public would be more familiar with the term blogger than organisational consultant.
Technorati Tags: Annette Clancy, Blogging, Blogs, Business Blogging, Drury Communications, Ed Byrne, Interactions, Microsoft, Robert Scoble, Thinking Out Loud
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Piaras,
You say “when we finally get around to blogging, would it be better if we set up individual blogs for people to have for themselves, or would it be better if staff contributed to the one site?”
It’s a good question, and one that we asked ourselves when setting up ours. Our answer was to create a business blogging community. I have written about the benefits of these over individual blogs at length here, here and here, but in my opinion they are the best way to have individual blogs AND one site that staff contribute to. The community facilitates and aggregates.
I’m not sure there’s a huge difference between an employee blog or a corporate one though. If there is, then surely the difference is content, not who writes it or how it’s set up.
Been thinking exactly the same thing. Post to come…probably.
Thanks for the link Piaras - I really think that business blogs do have the capacity (particularly for small businesses and entrepreneurs) to position the service and consultant etc in a market in a competitive way. At the end of the day people hire anyone because (a) they can do the job and (b) because of the personal relationship/trust they develop so I’m hoping that by blogging about what I do, it will help with relationship building before and after I work with clients
Drury Communications? Wouldn’t have known that but I’m not a regular reader. Do you refer to them in your posts?
I think blogs are great for businesses. One of the best examples I have seen is the protopage blog.
http://blog.protopage.com/2006/03/07/upload-photos-to-your-protopage/#comments
If you are new to a product like this, you can’t help but be impressed by the enthusiasm of the comments and the professional response of the protopage team.
Its about building relationships and it also puts pressure on the company to maintain high service levels in customer support. The whole world sees how you deal with your customers, so you can’t mess up really.
A corporate blog is a little like a corporate team building program … everyone knows it should be taken seriously, that it will benefit them, but they also feel it is a game. A personal blog, on the other hand, is like a true confession … not everything is believed entirely, but the general impact is breath-taking.