Last, but not least: Employing professional blog monitoring services saw a sharp rise from 6% in 2006 to 20% in 2007. That’s still pretty low, in my opinion, and there may be many job and business opportunities there as well.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:33 PM
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August 03, 2006

Yahoo! launches corporate blog

It isn't everyday that a corporate blog makes reference to Cosmo Kramer in an entry. But then again, Yahoo! isn't your average corporation.

Yodel Anecdotal launched on Aug. 1 and promises to give readers an inside look at the big purple building in Sunnyvale, Calif.

We want to share insights into our company, our people, our culture, and the things that occupy our cluttered minds. We’ll cover emerging trends, provide some behind-the-scenes commentary, profile interesting Yahoos, spotlight our beloved users, reveal some of our quirks, tap into guest bloggers, sprinkle in some videos and photo essays, and generally think out loud (lucky you… you get to listen). You’ll hear from interns to executives. Some days we’ll be light and airy, others we’ll get serious.

The colorful blog includes video clips, links to Yahoo! product blogs and a Flickr page set up just for Yodel photos, present and past. The video tour of the Yahoo! campus is cute, all eight minutes of it, and shows you around the fitness center, cafeteria and numerous gumball stations.

With just two entries so far, both by Nicki Dugan (listed as blog editor), I've enjoyed reading Yodel and am excited to see what they've got up their blogging sleeves. The tone feels very inviting and I'm looking forward to more "behind-the-scene" tours and stories from employees and insiders.

I'm also interested in seeing how they deal with negative comments, if they post them at all. In the 81 comments the first post received by Aug. 3, I didn't notice any remarks from people that didn't like the blog. The terms of service are clearly stated in the sidebar and there's even a disclaimer and web site address for general customer service complaints, too. This was a good move on Yahoo!'s part as I'm sure many customers would see the blog as a place to list problems with software and service.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:04 PM
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March 13, 2006

It's the conversation, stupid

Business 2.0 talks about how MySpace beat out Friendster in social networking:

The lesson there is that if you are trying to build a social network, you need to let the members express themselves however they like, even if you don't like how they are doing it.

I think the same is true for companies thinking about blogging. If you're going to allow comments, you have to let people have their opinions, even if you don't agree.

Business 2.0 also mentions how Friendster overthought its network. Again, the same is true for the corporate world and blogging. If you think about it too much and come up with every possible scenario, blogging may look and feel scary. But jump in and test the waters, and it's not so bad after all.

Posted by root at 08:34 AM
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February 10, 2006

University of Michigan hops on the blog bandwagon

The University of Michigan is offering blogs to students and staff, using Movable Type. My first question after I read this was, why? Why provide blogs to students who likely already have one somewhere else?

Then I read this in the Michigan Daily:

Archivists at the Bentley Library hope to preserve some of the postings in order to document student and academic life for future generations. Students may opt to put their blogs up for consideration through the site.

Another positive tidbit is that some university offices are posting notices and announcements to better communicate with students.

Now the negative:

Users of the mBlog service agree to the University of Michigan Proper Use Policy and Guidelines for Reponsible Use of information technology, including respecting the privacy and rights of other users, respecting the legal protection provided by copyright and licensing of data and programs, and respecting the intended use of resources. Users of the mBlog service who do not comply with these guidelines may be asked to remove objectionable blog content. In the event the blog author is not reachable or available to remove objectionable content, content may be removed by the University.

Although the blogs may be censored, I think it's a positive start by the University. It's always a good move to increase communication, and what a great way to create an historical archive. While it's no doubt a blip compared to the number of self-starting bloggers around the U-M campus, more than 500 have been created so far through the U's program. Now, if U-M President Mary Sue Coleman just opened up one of those accounts, things could really get interesting.

Posted by at 09:37 AM
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September 13, 2005

New corporate blogs on the block?

It looks like the soda and sweets maker Cadbury Schweppes has started a corporate communications blog. (via Constantin Basturea)

A quick search on on the Cadbury Schweppes web site shows another blog launch: Graduate Blogs launched. "Do you want to get a better idea of what it's like to work for Cadbury Schweppes? Then have a look at our business area blogs and hear some first hand stories from our current graduate trainees." Seven of their eight graduate areas have blogs.

InfoUSA is also testing the blog waters.

Posted by at 03:48 PM
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August 23, 2005

Compuware debuts developer blogs

Compuware launched 17 employee blogs, authored by the company's DevPartner and OptimalJ product employees. The portal page says:

These blogs are intended to stimulate thought, foster discussion and encourage debate. It is our collective hope that the Compuware Blogs become an important contribution to the software industry.

The site also sports a disclaimer:

The authors who post to this site are employed by Compuware Corporation. The opinions expressed here are the author's own and are not reviewed in advance by anyone other than the individual author. The opinions do not necessarily reflect the position of Compuware or any other third party.

The blogs are geared toward fellow software developers, and read as such:

UML is mainly geared towards OO technologies. UML is less suited for areas that are not OO-based, such as Relational database model, Web, Cobol-structures, etc. Luckily, for a number of these areas, there are other standard MOF-based model-languages available, such as the Common WareHouse Model (CWM).

Peter Karmanos Jr., Compuware's chairman and CEO, would make an excellent blogger. Karmanos has a history of colorful interviews with the media, and using a blog to promote his views and refute any negative coverage should be a no-brainer.

Posted by at 12:43 PM
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July 20, 2005

More about Boss Blogs

Christine Larson of U.S. News & World Report examines executive bloggers this week. While she revisits the best-known executive bloggers, Bob Lutz of General Motors, Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, Randy Baseler of Boeing, and Rich Marcello of HP, she also adds Carole Brown of the Chicago Transit Board, who is attempting to fill the crying need for local government blogs we talked about recently.

Mark Hass, MS&L’s CEO, notes in the article that even though only a minority of Internet users actually know what a blog is (but that survey is 8 months old by now), “Blog readers are a small but very influential group of people.”

Larson gives the last word to Bob Lutz, who has an astute observation about which executives are cut out for blogging: “Most senior executives rise to the top by being very analytical and buttoned-up and left-brained. That very careful executive is probably not going to be a good blogger.”

PR practitioner John Wagner writes about the U.S. News piece:

“I think most PR folks would be tickled pink to have a CEO who actually wanted to communicate.

Yes, we've all cringed when the big boss gets away from his scripted remarks and wanders into never-never land.

But blogs or no blogs, it's always easier to work with a CEO who believes in communication and who at least attempts to be human and engaging.”

P.S. I’ll be part of a panel at the Blog Business Summit next month in San Francisco exploring the topic “When Worlds Collide: Traditional Public Relations and the Blogosphere.” I attended the January BBS in Seattle, which was great, but this conference promises to focus more on business issues and less on the basics of blogging. Get a discount if you register for the conference through this web page before Saturday.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 07:04 PM
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July 13, 2005

This is a blog

Catalyst Group Design conducted a recent case study with the Well Spent blog on BusinessWeek. Catalyst used a focus group to see if they could navigate a blog and if they even knew they were viewing a blog. It's a negative on both accounts.

You can view the PDF here.

Of interest: Most readers didn't know they were on a blog because the word "blog" did not appear on the page. The group also didn't know how to use RSS; most looked for an email address box to subscribe.

It's important to understand that not everyone visiting your site will instinctively know that it's a blog. A company needs to have an "About Us" page that's different than its corporate Web site. It should explain the blog and its purpose.

It's also helpful to direct visitors to a FAQ page. Another good reference is a list of common blogging terms.

Companies should be talking to their consumers – and using a blog to do that when it makes sense. Here are a few of the newer ones joining in:

TaylorMade-adidas Golf

EDS The Next Big Thing

Backbone Media, started after their blogging survey.

and another IBM blog.

Posted by at 03:15 PM
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July 06, 2005

Corporate Blogs: Consider This

PR Opinions takes a post from Morgan McLintic and expounds on it with a great list of what companies should consider when starting a blog.

• Corporate blogs are about communication
  McLintic says it doesn't have to be "A-list" to be effective.
  
• It takes time
  Promote it via your website, promote the content via your newsletters and e-mail signatures and reach out to other blogs, journalists etc. where relevant.
  
• Measure it
  Measure visitors, RSS traffic, in-bound links, etc.
  
• Content
  Provide an honest, first-person perspective.
  
• Regularity
  PR Opinions and McLintic both say updating a blog doesn't need to be daily. I agree. It just needs to be regular. If readers expect a post every week and return to see no updates, they'll be disappointed.
  
• Make it interactive
  Run competitions, propose new product functionality and ask for feedback.
  

Posted by at 11:33 AM
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June 29, 2005

From bilingual newsrooms to multilingual blogs

By Kai Blum

Corporations and their target audiences are becoming more and more multinational and the importance of Spanish in the U.S. is also rising, but there are no well-known bi- and multilingual company blogs yet.

The currently closest thing to a multilingual corporate blog is, as Luistxo Fernandez points out, a company news site that has an index page with the latest posts - the newer ones up, the other down - that allows the reader to switch languages by the click of a button or link. The news sites of DaimlerChrysler and Siemens are good examples for such a bilingual approach in a near-blogging environment. Therefore, it would come as no surprise if companies that already have this kind of multilingual web publishing capability and experience are going to be pioneers in publishing multilingual blogs.

Multilingual web publishing experience or not, anyone who is going to attempt to publish corporate blogs in more than one language can draw from the knowledge of non-corporate multilingual bloggers such as the aforementioned Fernandez, who blogs in three languages (Basque, English, Spanish). Fernandez summarized his experiences in Ten Commandments for bilingual blogs, a list of features with which true multilingual blogs should comply. Many of the principles, e.g. monolingual pages, language change options on every page, and interface and content bilingualism are already familiar features of multilingual corporate news sites. This again makes it most likely that corporations with such communications experience are going to be first to take the step from bilingual newsrooms to bi- and multilingual blogs.

Posted by staff at 01:01 PM
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June 07, 2005

Pixels by the barrel

General Motors’ FastLane blog leads a weekend AP story about corporate blogs:

When General Motors Corp. wanted to stop speculation this spring that it might eliminate its Pontiac and Buick brands, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz took his case directly to dealers and customers who were up in arms about the possibility. He wrote about it on the company's blog.

That post, which generated 100 comments on the site, points to one of the most compelling reasons for corporations to start their own blogs – to tell their own stories. The old advice about never getting in a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel is still sound, but corporate blogs offer an alternative to owning your own printing press.

GM has used the FastLane blog several times as a bully pulpit. (Disclaimer: MS&L BlogWorks helps GM manage the FastLane blog.) These have included:

• Responding to car reviews it considered inaccurate and unfair in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.


• Defending its decision to cancel advertising in the LA Times, and


• Trumpeting its high marks in JD Power and Strategic Vision quality surveys.

Without a blog, a corporation arguing that a news story is unfair is left with these usual PR options, listed in order of desperation: (1) to put out a press release and hope news outlets use it without too much commentary, (2) to complain to a news publication’s editor and hope he’ll run a correction and/or speak to a reporter, (3) to complain to a competitive publication and hope they’ll write something snarky about the first publication.

It’s much more appealing to tell it the way you want to tell it. An added benefit of a true blog is that it also provides an instant reality check on how your message is going over.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 01:36 PM
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May 31, 2005

Superblogger Scoble defends PR value of his links

First consultant Stephan Spencer explained new PR in the blogosphere this way. He says first you start a blog, then you mention Scoble or other top bloggers, so that they’ll link to you:

• With the new PR, you start your own blog (assuming of course you have something worthwhile to say) and you work to become one of the blogging elite. The goal is to get the more influential bloggers to notice you and blog about you. You wouldn’t just leave this to chance; you’d help the process along. If, for example, you want to catch Scoble’s eye, then you would say something interesting that somehow relates to Scoble and work in a mention of his name. Scoble, like many other bloggers, follows what’s being said about him in the blogosphere by subscribing to a PubSub search results feed for the word “scoble.” If Scoble likes your post, you could end up with a mention on Scoble’s link blog or, better still, on the Scobleizer blog.

Then Trevor Cook, a PR man from Sydney, called it nonsense:

• This sort of thing is often written up as ‘revolutionary’ when really it is the worst sort of schmoozing and publicity-seeking dressed up as something else. It has nothing to do with public relations, as most practitioners would understand it.

(Perhaps those Australians have PR down to a cold science now, but in the U.S., I think we’re still pro-publicity and schmoozing.) Anyway, then Scoble showed up in Trevor Cook’s comments, and made a compelling case for the Scoble-first strategy:

• Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, reports that when I linked to ActiveWords they got about 400 downloads. When a famous national newspaper gave them a five-star review they got 32.
  Also, if I link to someone generally they'll get a Google PageRank of four or five, which will put them above 95% of the rest of the Web. (Look at what happened to the law firm my brother works at once I linked to them, went from not found on first five pages to #1 result).
  My take is that while getting a Scoble link or mention is a very fine thing, and Blogworks.org would never look askance at one, I can’t endorse Spencer’s scheme as a long-term strategy. First, we don’t recommend that every client begin blogging immediately. If blogging does make sense for company, it’s because they have a story to tell, because they like the idea of starting a conversation with customers, and because they passionately think it’s the right thing to do.

OK, so if the company starts a blog, it’s not a bad idea to work Scoble into a few posts. But after that, they’re going to have to come up with interesting material on their own. That's what will really get Scoble and other influential bloggers interested for the long haul.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 12:34 PM
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May 20, 2005

Monitoring what the boss says

By Christy Brewer

I’m really at a loss when it comes to all the hype over blogs. Really, why do we need a new vocabulary to talk about something that’s been around for so long? The conversations found on corporate blogs are exactly what I experienced the day the CEO of a $3 billion automotive supplier sat down next to me in the lunchroom.

Me, the lowly worker, sitting in the corporate cafeteria, with my peers. Along comes the CEO. He asked politely before plopping his tray down next to ours.

“Here we go, “ we all thought. “Here comes the corporate ‘rah-rah’ speech.”

We were wrong. He asked questions. About us, how our daily projects were going, and how we liked the food in the cafeteria. He asked about our families and our hobbies. He spent time getting to know us.

Then, we got up the guts to ask him the hard questions. What was happening with our stock? What’s this we hear of a merger? He answered the questions honestly, with the information he had. He answered them with what he was allowed to say.

So many who are watching the corporate blogosphere are afraid of people like Bob Lutz spilling his guts in a moment of impassioned reply to a post in his blog. Think about it. Bob knows what he can and cannot say. He’s not going to have dinner with his neighbor and spill the beans on the latest at the Design Center. He knows better than to say that, either on the blog or off.

Executives who are considering the risks of “spilling too much” on a blog need to put it in perspective. Even in a candid conversation, there are still things that you don’t say.

Let’s get to the more important point. Sometimes, people (customers/evangelists/clients/fellow bloggers) don't care what you say or don't say don’t care how you say or don’t say it. It’s more important to say something. Be out there, talking with your audience. Find out what they like and don’t like. Find out about their families and their hobbies. Look at the food they’re eating at the corporate lunch table.

Posted by staff at 12:11 PM
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May 19, 2005

Politicians Should Heed Call of the Blogosphere

By Clayton Closson

Should a government official or politician blog?

To blog or not to blog. That is the question…. Or is it? How many city managers, municipal PR spinsters, or even political leaders at the top levels even consider blogging? By the looks of the blogosphere not many. According to the Loic Le Meur blog, here are the top ten reasons why a politician should blog:

1. To get closer to their audience, their supporters
2. To create a permanent open debate with them
3. To test their ideas easily and quickly, to enrich them and get new ones
4. To switch the way they talk to people usually from institutional to more personal
5. To better understand the criticism of the people against their ideas
6. To spread their ideas easily if they are supported by many people, in a decentralized way
7. To raise funds for their cause, party or campaign
8. To reach a younger audience and help young people get more interested in politics
9. To create around them network effects
10. To become famous if you are an unkown politician, or to start a political action, even locally

These all seem pretty obvious to me and I’m not sure why ALL politicians aren’t using this tool professionally to help them serve their constituents and keep their jobs. A few are, like Wisconsin State Assemblyman Frank Lasee and John Conyers Jr.

I can’t think of a more obvious example of a politician who needs a blog than the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. Mayor Kilpatrick has been slammed, spanked, spun and spiked by the local Detroit media as of late for his conduct -- and his reply has been to deny, dismiss, and disregard. Well, it ain’t working and a host of anti-Kwame websites, such as kwamekilpatrick.com, firejerryo.com have sprung up on the web like weeds in a vacant Detroit lot. But where is the mayor to rebut these remarks? Nowhere online as far as I can tell. And there isn’t even an e-mail for him on the City of Detroit site. Hmmm, someone needs to give him a holler before it’s too late (he is the only incumbent mayor in the last 30 years to be not leading in polls this soon before the upcoming elections). Mayor Kilpatrick needs to get his word out and a blog would be a good start.

Posted by staff at 09:43 AM
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May 17, 2005

The porous membrane

Hugh MacLeod explains why corporate blogging works at his Gaping Void blog. And he’s got a cell-like cartoon to illustrate it.

In his cartoon, above, B is the marketplace / conversation (see Cluetrain) for your product. A is the conversation within your company about your product. X is the membrane separating the conversations. When X is porous, the more the conversations in A and B resemble each other. That’s good.

“The things that A is passionate about, B should also be passionate about. This we call alignment. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned.”

Blogs poke holes in the membranes, he says, like “Swiss cheese,” so that the internal conversation is communicated to the public, and the company hears the public conversation.

(One quibble: Does he need the letter Y? What does it represent, the outer limits of the conversation?) Hugh also sells limited edition T-shirts with his cartoons.

Feeding the blog

Also, as Hugh notes, management guru Tom Peters has discovered blogging is an all-consuming pastime and that after three months, he needs a break. Yes, the journey of a thousand posts has already taken its toll on countless bloggers. Even Scoble had to take a break a couple of months ago.

I have a couple of suggestions to reduce the blogger mortality rate: First, don’t venture into the blogosphere unless you’re committed to keeping the dialogue going for six months or more. And, how about if -- to reduce the number of blogs Technorati and the rest of us have to keep track of -- we declare a blog dead after three months of inactivity? Bring us fresh meat.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 02:37 PM
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May 13, 2005

Proofreading for blogs? Absolutely.

By Christy Brewer

You know this would cheese me. Adrants features an announcement from someone who thinks misspellings are charming. Okay, okay… it’s fine for your personal LiveJournal, but if you want to attract intelligent clientele (read: any corporate client), you absolutely must have every letter and punctuation mark in its respective place.

Unfortunately, yes, corporate bloggers, this means running your posts by a proofreader before posting. Train your proofreader to move with the conversational flow of the post copy, but make sure everything is technically correct. Otherwise, you could be in the hot seat.

If you can’t afford a proofreader (because we can be an expensive lot!), at least do this:

1. Run a spellchecker. Better, compose your post in a word processing program. Then, cut/paste into your blog submission form.
2. Read the post backward. Read each word separately to ensure that each word is, in fact, a word you would expect to see in the post.
3. Have one other person read it. Another set of eyes never hurts.

No, it’s not cute. Trust me. You never know, I just might be your customer some day. Make me happy.

Posted by staff at 08:46 AM
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May 11, 2005

Help nominate CEO bloggers

USA Today notes the dearth of CEOs who have taken up blogging. It’s apparently too frightening. And so many CEOs are afraid to offend.

It’s only a matter of time, though. The risks may be high, but so are the rewards: a better relationship with customers, putting a human face on a corporate monolith, an opportunity to speak to customers without the filter of news media. On the Red Couch blog, Sun’s COO Jonathan Schwartz says the thousand blogs by Sun employees, including his, have bottom-line benefits:

He believes that the 1,000 Sun bloggers' contribution hasn’t just moved the needle for the company, "they’ve moved the whole damned compass. The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticated the Sun brand more than a billion-dollar ad campaign could have done."

So -– I’d like to nominate some CEOs who should blog. And let’s not limit it to current CEOs. Here are some past and present CEOs I’d like to see blog.

• Genghis Khan: talk about passion and authority!


• Roger Smith, former General Motors CEO: if he’d expressed some concern for the laid-off workers in Flint, maybe Michael Moore wouldn’t have tormented him so.


• Ross Perot: former CEO of EDS and candidate for president: He could be a good blogger, as he dislikes bureaucracy and gives great quote. (“If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a committee on snakes.”) But he’s not big on being criticized.


• Bill Ford, CEO of Ford: he’s young, popular with employees, he talks green, and his name is on the building.


• USA Today suggests Wal-Mart's H. Lee Scott. Certainly Wal-Mart needs to demonstrate its humanity and listen to criticism. And its blog would attract plenty.


• Your CEO: wouldn’t you like to hear his vision, and better yet, know that he can hear you?

Your nominations are welcome.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 01:58 PM
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May 05, 2005

Benedict the blogger?

Future blogger?

I’ve been thinking that if anyone needs a corporate blog, it’s Pope Benedict XVI. Here’s why: He’s got an image problem (what with his previous jobs as successor to the Grand Inquisitor and Hitler Youth), he succeeds a popular, populist CEO, he leads a global corporation that needs to show a human face, and he needs to engage in a dialogue with skeptical customers.

It turns out a Notre Dame student and alum have already started an unofficial pope blog. It’s respectful and respectable, perhaps overly so, but I’d like to see His Holiness try his own hand at blogging. He already has skillful PR counsel in Dr. Joaquín Navarro-Valls, and his first messages to the world struck the right chords. But what better way to show he’s moved beyond the Middle Ages than embracing this new and open technology?

Blog topics could include: Heresy, Sex & Why You Should Avoid It, My Favorite Cardinals, and Life at the Vatican.

Thanks to Miss-Information for the identities of the popeblog creators. And see Benedict XVI T-shirts here (“Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981.”)

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 02:00 PM
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