Corporate Blogging

So who needs a blog anyway?  And just exactly what IS a blog?  Blog - short for Web Log is an online journal.  Nothing more exotic than that. 

If you wrote your youthful secrets to someone called Dear Diary, you pretty much get the concept.  Advances in technology now allow youthful (and not-so-youthful) authors to publish their thoughts on the web.  Just like those scruffy little diaries that we hid under our beds, some blogs are filled with meaningful insights and flowing prose, and some are, well... not.

Blogs started a few years ago primarily as online personal diaries.  Many of them contained what most of us would consider way too much information about the author's personal life.  As the concept caught on however, businesses began to see the benefits, and new corporate blogs are now popping up every day.

The best business blogs offer brief but worthwhile articles, tips, and links, along with a few insights into the humans behind the logo.  They are informal business conversations with the reader.  If the reader enjoys the conversation, they'll come back for more.

Business blogs are a growing trend, as reported in a recent article in the Charlotte Observer:  The Corporate Blogger. 

Mary Jacobs writes - If you can't beat 'em, hire 'em.

That emerging marketing strategy is creating a new career: corporate bloggers.

At times, individuals who run online journals known as blogs -- or Web logs -- have been a thorn in the side of big companies, generating bad buzz about products and airing unhappy customers' complaints to a wider audience.

But some companies are taking a different approach, hiring corporate bloggers to get their messages out to the blogosphere.

"Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective," decreed a recent BusinessWeek article. "They're a prerequisite.

More...

So who needs a blog anyway?  And just exactly what IS a blog?  Blog - short for Web Log is an online journal.  Nothing more exotic than that. 

If you wrote your youthful secrets to someone called Dear Diary, you pretty much get the concept.  Advances in technology now allow youthful (and not-so-youthful) authors to publish their thoughts on the web.  Just like those scruffy little diaries that we hid under our beds, some blogs are filled with meaningful insights and flowing prose, and some are, well... not.

Blogs started a few years ago primarily as online personal diaries.  Many of them contained what most of us would consider way too much information about the author's personal life.  As the concept caught on however, businesses began to see the benefits, and new corporate blogs are now popping up every day.

The best business blogs offer brief but worthwhile articles, tips, and links, along with a few insights into the humans behind the logo.  They are informal business conversations with the reader.  If the reader enjoys the conversation, they'll come back for more.

Business blogs are a growing trend, as reported in a recent article in the Charlotte Observer:  The Corporate Blogger. 

Mary Jacobs writes - If you can't beat 'em, hire 'em.

That emerging marketing strategy is creating a new career: corporate bloggers.

At times, individuals who run online journals known as blogs -- or Web logs -- have been a thorn in the side of big companies, generating bad buzz about products and airing unhappy customers' complaints to a wider audience.

But some companies are taking a different approach, hiring corporate bloggers to get their messages out to the blogosphere.

"Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective," decreed a recent BusinessWeek article. "They're a prerequisite.

More...