A New Way to Communicate called the Corporate Blog

The corporate blog as a concept is nothing novel: business organizations have long found one way or the other to connect to customers and prospects. There have been trade journals, self-published magazines, sponsored newspaper columns, the works. The advent of blogging as an internet based platform enabled organizations to introduce a new line of communication: that of the corporate blog. The beauty of blogging itself as a vehicle for communication is not just in the blog as an isolated entity, but in the millions on online journal pages that link together to form a larger web communication platform that we call the blogosphere. That also means that there is little or no vetting, and thus none of the quality control that print journals and newspaper articles go through.

While this means that the blogosphere is one of the few places even on the WWW where true freedom of speech can be enjoyed (forums will often censor or edit or even ban you). That in itself raises some problems. As such, the overall consistency of quality of the content on the blogosphere leaves something to be desired. From disjointed ramblings to posts spewing political venom and bigoted hate and ego-massage pieces smacking of attention-seeking arrogance; you’ll see them all.

However, there is a clear divide that you’ll see, between the casual ‘diary-keeping’ blogger and the serious blogger who writes responsibly and with a sense of purpose. In the latter category are also the online marketers who run their company’s corporate blog.

Even the worst critics of blogs today cannot afford to close eyes to the power that the phenomenon called corporate blog holds. Blogs as a whole have been the most spectacular outbreak in the information world since the WWW itself. A company’s corporate blog once used to be one of the marketing ‘tools’; today, it is the tip of the spear. The corporate blog today is no longer an option; it is a necessity.

There are over 15 million blogs out there, with several tens of thousands of new ones cropping up every day. As discussed before, the ease of opening a blogger account and letting rip means that the only control over the quality is self-imposed, and over 99% of posts amply reflect that. That leaves a very slim minority of new and old blogs that could be anything from a corporate blog to blogs telling you how to run your corporate blog, how to engage employees, and so on and so forth.

This seemingly boundless potential for data sharing gives rise to a fair bit of information paranoia, and it would even seem justified. After all, we’re moving towards a world where paper is fast becoming unnecessary and almost all information is digital; from government filings to corporate e-mails and trade proposals, any information can be broadcast all over the WWW with a few clicks over an Internet connection on a computer or even a smartphone. Salacious gossip and scandalous news spreads faster than wildfire, and that’s not even the worse part: once something comes onto the blogosphere, it stays on unless removed by the blogger or administrator.

And yet, all this scary news is merely an aberration if you look at the immense amount of good a blog, your corporate blog for instance, can be used for. They do say that a lie can be halfway across the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, but good ideas travel on the blogosphere as fast as juicy gossip does. Out there is a world of audience that includes potential customers, affiliate marketers who can help sell your product or service, and even fellow bloggers who can help you spread the word just because they agree with you. And while you may be shy about testing the corporate blog waters, your competitors are not likely to be.

Peter Ongg is an expert on social media marketing and corporate communications. He frequently contributes to the corporate blog www.elitegrup.com among other online and print publications that he consults for.

26 Garden Road
Hong Kong
peterongg@ymail.com
http://www.elitegrup.com/

This release was published on openPR.