Melina Murray

Blogging is a prevalent form of communication today. There are so many different people, topics and ideas out in cyberspace. When the topic of a company or corporate blog comes up, the question I most often hear is “why”? “What is the value”? “What do we get out of it”?

My answer is that it depends on what you want.

Some companies use blogs to promote build a reputation of thought leadership. In these cases the contributors most often post about topics directly related to the industry, current issues, and the company’s products/mission.

Some companies use the blog as a way to stay in contact with their community, inviting customers, employees, and guests to write posts and/or comment on ideas and products.

Other companies use their corporate blog as a way to announce new products, ideas, welcome clients, etc. Like a personal, but public, bulletin board.

And, of course, a blog can be used as a recruiting tool. Whether positioning your company as a thought leader, talking about cool new products, and/or posting job openings. All these ideas help expand not only your company brand, but reach out to potential hires. Think of that talented, passive candidate who may be attracted by a post to learn more about your company.

I read an excellent description of corporate blogging via the Liz Ryan Digest from Graco’s lead blogger. (posted here with the author’s permission)

I am actually the lead corporate blogger for Graco Children’s Products and we’ve had a lot of success with it so far. How you define success truly depends on what you are trying to accomplish. At the heart of corporate blogging, it’s really about the conversation you want to engage in with your audience. Blogs aren’t publishing mediums and they also aren’t the only/most important part of a social media strategy. For us, it’s about having a relationship with our target audience (parents) who are actively participating in the online space- we are just a part of that now. It’s about going to your audience where they already are instead of expecting them to come to you. Engage and participate - authentically, and your success will come from that. I recently spoke at the BlogHer Business conference in NYC presenting the Graco case study on successful blogger outreach. You can check out the panel here http://blip.tv/file/813495/ and here http://blip.tv/file/813680/. Social media has been the most fun I’ve had since starting my marketing career over 8 years ago. Good luck and
have fun with it!

Lindsay Lebresco

http://blog.gracobaby.com
Public Relations and Social Media Manager, Graco Children’s Products-a Newell Rubbermaid company

There are various considerations prior to setting up a company blog. From purpose/intent, to guidelines (including legal protections), to deciding who writes, and more.

For other articles, information and guidelines on Corporate Blogging, feel free to visit the links below:

• Corporate Blogging- How the Pros Do It
• How To Create the Perfect Company Blog
• Should You Start a Business Blog?
• The Process of Starting a Corporate Blog

There is a lot of talk about twitter all over the blogosphere. My first impression in watching someone use twitter was that it was weird and obsessive. Then I joined. And it was weird and time consuming- for a while. However, as I found people to follow and read what they had to say, my view changed. I realized that it opened a door to communicate with people I would not have otherwise. There are those who twitter what they are doing every half hour and there are more who post interesting article and blog links, who ask questions, who expand my knowledge base.

Then I started thinking about twitter in the workplace. Mike Murray’s post on Episteme got me thinking. He linked to a post from Text Technologies that listed more viewpoints and thoughts. I like the idea. It doesn’t necessarily work for all companies, but can add levels of communication that otherwise would not be available. Ann All at IT Business Edge has a post about Twitter in the enterprise that links to multiple other posts- great information and thoughts.

There are some kinks that would have to be worked out, but I am going with the idea that it is secure and adopted by all levels of management.

Lets look at a “protected” twitter account (yes, there are some fixes needed to make this happen). An employee can communication with multiple people at once- like a chat room. Remote employees could keep in touch with other locations. Different departments that may not have had any contact before could get to know each other, share ideas. Collaboration across teams could happen more quickly and easily. Company leaders could send updates, publicly congratulate teams/projects, check in for status updates, and, see their employees as people and not just “resources”. This is a big one. So many employees feel “out of the loop” when it comes to communication from the top. It doesn’t have to always be business related either, as noted on the Episteme post.

When it comes to public accounts, the uses are endless in terms of marketing, PR, and, yes, recruiting. Recruiters and hiring managers are now tweeting about job openings at their companies. Brilliant. Not only is there an ability to reach a wide audience of both active and passive candidates (and referrals), the reader gets a feel for the culture and environment by reading past tweets.

I, like many, am eager to see how this new style of communication develops in the workplace. If you use twitter in the workplace, I would love to hear from you.