m A corporate weblog is published and used by

an organization to reach its organizational

goals.
m The advantage of blogs is that posts and
comments are easy to reach and follow due
to centralized hosting and generally
structured conversation threads.
m Corporate Blogging and Marketing Blogs are
fast becoming a powerful way to draw traffic
and convince your audience that you have
the strongest ideas and products in your
marketplace.
m ánternal
m External
m An internal blog, generally accessed through
the corporation's ántranet, is a weblog that
any employee can view. Many blogs are also
communal, allowing anyone to post to them.
The informal nature of blogs may encourage:

× employee participation
× free discussion of issues
× collective intelligence
× direct communication between various layers of
an organization
× a sense of community
m ánternal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings
and e-mail discussions, and can be
especially useful when the people involved
are in different locations, or have conflicting
schedules.
m Blogs may also allow individuals who
otherwise would not have been aware of or
invited to participate in a discussion to
contribute their expertise.
m An external blog is a publicly available weblog where
company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their
views.

m át is often used to announce new products and services (or

the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or
to react on public criticism on certain issues.

m át also allows a window to the company culture and is often

treated more informally than traditional press releases,
though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar
goals as press releases do.
m ome corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be
made to the posts.

m External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased,

though they can also offer a more honest and direct view
than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless,
they remain public relations tools.

m Corporate blogs may be written primarily for consumers

(Business-to-consumer) or primarily for other businesses
(B2B).

m The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50

listing among all blogs worldwide.
m The number of subscribers, blog comments,
links to blog posts, and the number of times a
post is shared in other social media are
indicators of a blog's popularity, potential
influence, and reach.
m While business blogs targeted to consumer
readers may have a high number of
subscribers, comments, and other measures
of engagement; corporate blogs targeted to
other businesses, especially those in niche
industries, may have a very limited number of
subscribers, comments, links, and sharing via
social media.
m The business blog can provide additional
value by adding a level of credibility that is
often unobtainable from a standard
corporate site.
m The informality and increased timeliness of
information posted to blogs assists with
increasing transparency and accessibility in
the corporate image.
m Business blogs can interact with a target
market on a more personal level while
building link credibility that can ultimately be
tied back to the corporate site.
m More than 12% of the Fortune 500
companies blog externally.
m rovides the company and their employees
exposure as thought leaders in their industry.
m ámproves the visibility of the company. án fact,
according to some statistics, 87% of some
visits to company websites make it there
through blogs.
m rovides your employees, clients, and
prospects with a human face to your
company.
m át leverages the blogosphere and search
engine technologies to improve your
company·s findability on the ánternet.
m Familiarize yourself with blogging and
consumer-generated media
m Determine whether a blog is right for your
company.
m Develop a content strategy.
m ádentify the best person to write your blog.
m Choose an appropriate publishing platform.
m Optimize your blog content for search
engines.
m ánitiate an honest conversation with your
audience.
m Monitor the blogosphere for relevant news
and ideas.
m Write often, stay focused, and include
relevant links to increase readership.
m et a blogging policy and blogging
guidelines.
m Edelman Digital, the digital arm of Edelman,
has done particularly well in this aspect.
ánstead of simply stating what they·re
capable of, the Digital Team blogs
consistently and maintains presence through
various social spaces; communicating their
strengths more through actions than words.
The blog contains insights and opinions
regarding the digital horizon
m Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott ánternational, has used a blog
to his advantage. The blog contains content on his current
focus, thoughts and whereabouts. á·m pretty sure the blog is
well received among the entire Marriott staff.
m Oorporate blogs can be extremely beneficial if they
are done in the right way. These blogs are one of the
rare ways by which a company can maintain its
transparency. This is a very casual environment
where a company gets a chance to interact with its
customers, talk about its future plans along with
current market trends and situations.
m át is considered to be one of the easiest Êays to
engage customers and explain to them everything
which would not have been possible behind closed
doors. áf the blog is written passionately it will be able
to reach out to more people ² it acts as a valuable
ad campaign of the company in a soft manner.
m Oorporate blogs are the sources of instant
feedbacks and suggestions for the company.
m This way, the company can assure everyone,
that the management is taking into account the
general interest of all employees and customers
before arriving at any decision.
m Blogs are loved by search engines since they
have lots of content that gets updated
everyday. This means more traffic to the website,
leading to more chances of sales.
m o, blogs are best ways to get the website
optimized and get more traffic than otherwise
possible.
m ºinks are also an important part of blogs and if
you wish to get some good links, the blog works
best to get you those reference links.
m There have been dozens of cases of workers warned or fired
because of something they wrote on a blog. án a survey by
roofpoint, over 57 percent of executives at 332 large companies
said they were concerned about blogs as a source of trouble for
their companies.
m át can be tricky to drag public comment out of a company
without first routing through the sanitizing filter of a press office.
m Even if senior managers trust staff not to give away the
company's commercial secrets - and many don't - there are still
enough worries about libel and (for publicly listed companies)
stock market disclosure rules to have the legal department
waking in sweats for months to come.
m There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on
their knowledge, and the competitive edge - and thus the safety
of everyone's jobs - is the thickness of a single good idea. haring
it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival is not
really wise.
m There is a risk that an ill-judged comment could be seized upon
by the media or disgruntled investors.
m The best non-corporate blogs are spontaneous and
genuine. oorly written corporate blogs can look
fake -- or perhaps worse, they reveal incompetence
on he part of the writer.
m Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs
are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing
coherently is one of the most difficult and time-
consuming tasks for a human being to undertake.
m The people who have most time to write have least
to say, and the people who have most to say don·t
have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise
within the organization lays hidden, as you get
drowned in trivia.
m Blogs make many organizations look like
disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions.
Contrary to what some might think, the average
customer prefers it if the organization they are about
to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.
m èakshika Nagarkar
m ushant Jangale
m unil onigara
m riya Lakhe
m Amey awar
m Mithilesh Baboo
m ratik Biyani