A corporate blog is a tool and weblog published that can used by the all types of business to reach their goals as well as to extend their image in the marketplace. Corporate blogs have become an easy-to-access window for most companies to communicate with their customers. Besides, it also helps the organizations have an opportunity to open a two-way channel between employees and customers. Examples of reasons to start a corporate blog would include: Employment Branding, Product Launch, Public Relations, Marketing Campaigns, Consulting Services, Vendor Relations, Media Relations, and Innovative Ideas used to establish Industry Expertise. There are 2 major categories of corporate blogs which are Internal Blogs and External Blogs.
The Internal Blogs divide into:
1) Knowledge Blogs: give employees information relating to their work assignments.
2) Collaboration Blogs: provide a working team with a tool for research, collaboration and discussion.
3) Culture Blogs: strengthen organizational culture.
It is generally accessed through the company intranet. Therefore, any employee can receive the latest information and news through this intranet. The informal nature of blogs may encourage employees’ participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence, direct communication between various layers of an organization and a sense of community.
The External Blogs include:
1) Sales Blogs: provide updated information from time to time to the customers related to new launched products or any others promotion products.
2) Relationship Blogs: create, uphold or strengthen relationships with customers, suppliers and so on.
3) Branding Blogs: strengthen the brand, the profile of the publishing organization or individuals within it.
It is a publicly available weblog where employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It 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 in honest and direct view.
Apart from that, corporate blogs have both advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of Corporate Blogging
1. Help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with their customers, as they interact with the ‘human face’ of the organization through blogs.
2. Help employees to keep themselves informed on all the current happenings in the organization.
3. In an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge within the organization. E.g. allow employees to display their expertise on a particular topic, thereby becoming a recognized industry.
4. Can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping a finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas.
5. Can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.
Disadvantages of Corporate Blogging
1. Some employees may use blogs to write negatively about the company which can lead to bad publicity.
2. Most people do not have very much to say that is interesting, and/or are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner.
3. If organizations do not make sure that a blog complies with all applicable local, national and foreign requirements for doing business, it can lead to legal liabilities.
4. 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. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.
As a conclusion, blogging encourages communication and allows businesses more easily to reach their customers. If used properly, corporate blogging will enhance customer loyalty, and can make the business more successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment