The Potential of Corporate Blogging

There's a lot of debate and discussion about the value and potential of corporate blogs within my organization. We have seen blogging take off with some companies we have done work with - e.g. Sun, Microsoft. Their customers, products and services are all native to the Web space so it's a natural place to connect. 

I remember in the early days of the Web (I've been around a while...but that's another posting), as a digital design Creative Director when Photoshop was in its early releases, we would email directly with John Knoll, one of the programs creators. He would respond or post responses. He was excellent about listening and being interested in expert user feedback. That developer/user relationship was tremendous and did more than anything to make me an Adobe enthusiast.

That very personal, inside discussion is part of the magic for me. There is something primal about the desire to be "heard" and responded to. It does create a bond. Those of use in the brand stewardship space really respect that bond idea.

Robin Dindayal from iupload made a list of how corporate blogs can add value. In general, I think he is dead-on. And his two first points are the most critical and worth a lot more explanation:

1. Blogs allow for conversation alignment between customers and companies
2. The "human face" of blogs help companies develop stronger relationships with their customers

Where do you see the value of corporate blogs? (Gulp- and how would you measure it?)

Comments

[JezabelleChronicles]

My opinion, corporate blogs are a marketing media that can offer a degree of personalization through customer control of the delivered message. I believe the opportunities are significant.

Value of corporate blogs; pricepoint, media opportunities (type, audio, video), limitless bandwidth for various targeted market channels, etc..

I do suspect the major obstacle to this would be brand protection and therefore control of content (i.e. weary of comments and/or content not in corporate control).

So I would look to see an increased but somewhat reserved evolution in ths space.

JMHO

[hugh macleod]

So I'm a "useful tool". Heh.

How's Ogilvy doing these days? And why on earth isn't Mark Earls blogging???

[Mike]

Customers are more eager to listen to a company that they know will listen to them.

[Hans on Experience]

@mike: I would say: PEOPLE will listen more to PEOPLE and not to a company.