Day: March 24, 2005

PR Opinions will be fairly quiet over the Easter period.

Thanks to everyone who has already completed the PR Opinions survey, we’ve already passed last year’s number of respondents.

Why not take a couple of minutes to fill it out.  As one of the respondents has commented “it’s simplistic” – come to think it that may have been a criticism 🙂

Amy Joyce at the Washington Post questions the value of corporate blogs.

“Looking back before the dust settles on 2004, it was a great year of building momentum for BCA [Boeing Commercial Airplanes]. Our orders went up, with 272 in ’04 compared to 239 in ’03. It was a super year for widebodies for us,” wrote Randolph S. Baseler, Boeing Co.’s vice president of marketing, on Jan. 17 in his first entry at boeing.com/randy.

“With blogs like that (Boeing’s Randy Baseler), who needs news releases? Some Internet watchers wonder if a blog that sounds like nothing more than a corporate press room is worth the effort.”

I think Amy’s article raises an interesting question.  The point of a corporate blog is to provide a human face on the organization.  If that “face” is mumbling corporate speak then my advice to you is don’t bother.  The corporate blog should provide opinions, observations and color.  If you’re going to use the same formula as a press release then put it out on PR Newswire.

This is why you need to be careful whom you choose to front your corporate blog.  You need an executive with time, opinions and an understanding of one-to-one communication.  If you don’t, then you’re wasting your valuable time. Don’t create a corporate blog just so you can take it off your to-do list.  Create a corporate blog to improve your communications with your audience, to build rapport, create relationships and help your audience get a better insight into your organization.

 

Two interesting blog related items:

 Steve Rubel has a good post on the emergence of two different models of business blogging, namely:

• Bottom-up blogging – where employees themselves blog
• Top-down blogging – where the blog is driven by the corporate team

It seems to me both have a useful role in effective communications.

 

 Meanwhile, Fredrik Wack�STRONG> over at the CorporateBloggingBlog, points to an interesting analysis by Dennis Hamilton on the differences and similarities of internal and external blogs.