corporate image

Do your homework when hiring bloggers

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:01:36 -0400

Blogging can be good for your business, improving the corporate image, raising visibility and bolstering customer relationships. But with little time, many companies are turning to outside sources to write those blogs. Choose your bloggers carefully, though. Otherwise, you could experience some of the high-profile gaffes recently in the news, such as bloggers for the John Edwards campaign, who were found to have written some inflammatory postings earlier in their careers. Know what people have published, and have policies on which words are owned by your organization and which aren't, as well as what's acceptable and what isn't.

Read more about responsible blogging:
- read the article at CIO Insight

ALSO: read this on corporate blogging as a productivity tool

Corporate blogging: The next productivity tool?

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:01:39 -0500

Corporate blogging can save companies money and time while improving the corporate image, raising visibility and improving relationships with customers. Often thought of as a place for executives to rant a bit, blogs also can be used to track customer comments, providing insight to senior executives that can lead to productive change. Blogs also perform very well on search engines, making them a great tool to increase website traffic. By using tracking codes in links from the corporate blog, you can identify which visits click through to offers or order forms. That makes it a good way to identify sales that arise directly from blog traffic. Blogs can also be used to float ideas or inform customers about corporate developments or new products. But evaluate the ROI carefully: blogs are cheap to start, but employees spend two to three hours per week maintaining their online journals.

For more about corporate blogging:
- read the column at TechTarget

Related Articles:
Beware of employee blogs. Report
Practices for a corporate blog effort. Report

Practices for a corporate blog effort

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:01:37 -0400

The latest big tech titan to launch a corporate blog is Dell, but it had to be surprised that it's latest communications effort wasn't that warmly received by the blogging community. That's one of the tough lessons companies are learning these days as there are rules and expectations in place on what company blogs should be and shouldn't be. The first rule is to make sure there is a strong business case for the company's blog and make sure it presents the corporate image that's all so critical today. Then, it might prove useful to look around at how some of the big players, including Apple and Microsoft, have approached blogging and the tough lessons they learned during the early days. It's not a quick and easy communications venture, but experts say it's one that can work well if given enough strategy and planning time.

For more on making a corporate blog work:
- see this article at BusinessWeek