Blogs and RSS in Business and Marketing
On this page I’m gathering links and information for a talk I’m giving at the Drexel CoAS E-Learning Lecture series on October 5, 2005, on blogs and RSS and business and marketing. If you have comments or suggestions for this talk, please feel free to comment (below).
Here is the working overview.
With a few notable exceptions, corporations and institutions overall have
yet to embrace blogging for purposes of corporate development.
Similarly, few are using RSS for much more than syndicating news headlines
and press releases. This brief talk explores the untapped potential of
blogs and RSS for customer relations and PR, business development, and
organizational learning and knowledge management. Examples will be drawn
from a variety of industries including higher education (blogs as a
marketing tool), software, and automotive.
Examples of Corporations with Blogs
GM also has a podcast.
Forrester Research - Charlene Li
Wikis: Knowledge management and learning
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events.
Corporate Blogging Resources
Micropersuasion - blogging in marketing and PR
Cautionary Advice
But, not to beat a dead horse, blogs aren’t for every company. Some companies seem to be launching blogs for a lack of any other PR ideas or tactics, as a stop-gap fix for a lack of original ideas.
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper | Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Lots of News about Corporate Blogging
Individual Stories
Recent Survey on Corporate Policies Towards Blogging
70 Percent of Companies Have No Policies or Guidelines in Place for Employee Bloggers: report
Related entries in Corporate
A newly published report on blogs from Edelman and Intelliseek (of Blogpulse fame), “Talking From The Inside Out: The Rise of Employee Bloggers� has found that nearly 70 percent of companies have no policies or guidelines in place for employee bloggers, and that not having a policyt is a “clear liability for both companies and bloggers themselves.�
Other findings in the report:
- up to 9 percent of people posted to blogs (others or their own) to comment on or defend their
employer.
- Over a recent six-month period, blog postings with the phrase or derivative of “love my job� outnumbered those with “hate work� by about 2-to-1 and outnumbered those with “hate my boss� by about 4-to-1.
- Employee blogs have helped enhance the reputation of employers in many instances but have also hurt reputations in the case of several high-profile firings
“We have clear evidence that consumers and other important stakeholders make decisions about products and brands based largely on what a company’s employees say about them,� said Christopher Hannegan Senior Vice President and Director of Edelman’s Employee Engagement Practice. “Now blogs provide these same employees with access to a mass audience as never before. So companies need to understand that two powerful forces are beginning to converge in way that will have a direct and growing impact on their business.�
