New Year Offers the Chance to Start a Corporate Blog

The arrival of 2006 offers each of us a chance for a fresh start. For those who haven’t started a Corporate Blog, now is the time to start.

11 Rules for Corporate Blogs

(1) Be authentic
(2) Be an unmatched resource
(3) Once you start, don’t stop
(4) Keep the content relevant
(5) Measure your effectiveness
(6) Monitor other blogs
(7) Trust your insights
(8) Use blogs for knowledge management
(9) Use your blog for customer collaboration
(10) Develop a meaningful blog strategy
(11) Tell everyone to read your blog

8 Marketing Challenges for Corporate Blogs

(1) Save readers time and money
(2) Project a positive brand image
(3) Listen to your target audience
(4) Adapt to multiple media
(5) Give intelligent advice
(6) Use new technology creatively
(7) Develop new strategies for new markets
(8) Improve quality of life

Came across the following blog entry at http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001607.html

The Porous Membrane:
Why Corporate Blogging Works.


The other day somebody asked me to explain why corporate blogging works. Sure, we know it's the hot new thing and people are paying attention to it (including big media)... but why?

Why does it work? Seriously.

So I drew the diagram above.

1. In Cluetrain parlance, we say "markets are conversations". So the diagram above represents your market, or "The Conversation". That is demarkated by the outer circle "y".

2. There is a smaller, inner circle "x".

3. So the entire market, the "conversation" is seperated into two distinct parts, the inner area "A" and the outer area "B".

4. Area "A" represents your company, the people supplying the market. We call that "The Internal Conversation".

5. Area "B" represents the people in the market who are not making, but buying. Otherwise know as the customers. We call that "The External Conversation".

6. So each market from a corporate point of view has an internal and external conversation. What seperates the two is a membrane, otherwise known as "x".

7. Every company's membrane is different, and controlled by a host of different technical and cultural factors.

8. Ideally, you want A and B to be identical as possible, or at least, in sync. 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.

9. When A and B are no longer aligned is when the company starts getting into trouble. When A starts saying their gizmo is great and B is telling everybody it sucks, then you have serious misalignment.

10. So how do you keep misalignment from happening?

11. The answer lies in "x", the membrane that seperates A from B. The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between A and B, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both side of membrane "x" to adjust to the other, to become like the other.

12. And nothing, and I do mean nothing, pokes holes in the membrane better than blogs. You want porous? You got porous. Blogs punch holes in membranes like like it was Swiss cheese.

13. The more porous your membrane ("x"), the easier it is for the internal conversation to inform and align with the external conversation, and vice versa.

14. Not to mention it makes misalignment, if it happens, a lot easier to repair.

15. Of course this begs the question, why have a membrane "x" at all? Why bother with such a hierarchy? But that's another story.

[AFTERTHOUGHT:] And yes, this works with internal blogs as well, poking holes in the membranes that seperate people within a corporate culture; aligning "the conversation" internally etc.

The other advantage of internal blogging is that it organizes conversation into a long-term manageable form. Two people sharing ideas via blogs is a lot more permanent, viral and useful for the company than two people sharing the same information over by the watercooler.
Posted by hugh at May 9, 2005 06:44 PM