BlogWorks: Corporate blogging: Not dead yet

October 25, 2007

Corporate blogging: Not dead yet

Now that major corporations have been using blogs for a while, a number of non-webby PR people have asked me, “Isn’t blogging over? What about Second Life?”

I don’t blame them for asking. The dizzying adaptation of new web technologies over the last few years can lead a person to think that by the time he’s heard of a hot web trend, it’s already over. But even though you’ve been hearing about corporate blogs for years now, they’re not over.

Let me start by saying that when we jump on the latest tech for a PR program just because it’s new, the temptation is to confuse the medium with the message. Despite Marshall McLuhan, in this case the medium (the blog) is not the message. What’s on the blog is the message. That’s why I’m confident that blogs by corporations will outlive their Second Life islands.

Let’s compare:

	Corporate Blog	Second Life Corporate Island
Author	An executive, product evangelist or other expert	An improbably attractive avatar
Purpose	To evangelize, to put a human face on the corporation, to listen to customers	To evangelize, to put a sim face on the corporation, to listen to customers
Denizens	Passionate customers and gadflies	Gamers, stalkers, newbies, programmers, and some seriously warped individuals
Time	Commitment to write blog posts at least a couple of times per week, and manage the blog daily	Either leave your building abandoned, or pay someone to babysit it 24/7
Cost	Let’s talk, but more than free and less than $500,000.	An island is only $1,675, but you’ll need to hire specialized graphic artists to build anything on your island: $500,000 is an estimate I’ve heard

For these reasons, I believe more corporations will wade into the blogosphere in the next year. If we help them set expectations and manage the workload, they’ll like what they find there. Hundreds of corporations have already. Likewise, I doubt that Second Life will truly catch on as a corporate showcase, for some of the same reasons that it's difficult for newbies to get started there.

There’s a lot more to say about blogs. I spend much of my day working on them and talking about them. But bottom line: a blog is no more or less than a communications tool. It can be a highly effective, entertaining one, given the right client, the right content, the right authors and a strong vision.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at October 25, 2007 09:12 AM