Isabel Wang has an uncanny sense of how trends will play out in the online world. For over a year, she pushed us to start this blog. Today, an article in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reveals that some 40 of the nation's Fortune 500 companies have blogs. After launching this blog in June, I need to kick myself for not starting it sooner. We've only been blogging a month but here are a few things we've learned ...
Blogs are useful. When Isabel kept telling me to launch a blog, I did not see the utility. Sure, I can opine as well as the next guy, but would anyone actually read it? The answer is yes. People do read the blog. We've had questions in our helpdesk that stem directly from blog posts. Though we've yet to get comments, our stats show people are reading some of the posts. Our blog pages have the highest on-site time as any page on our site, so our visitors must be finding something useful.
Blogs open up your company. Our blog provides our staff with an easy to use outlet to highlight their knowledge and skills on the industry. Right now just our two principals make posts but this will expand once we learn how to most effectively use the blog.
Blogs risk are containable. Sun Microsystems has over 3500 employee blogs. They have very simple rules for posting and posts are not pre-screened. Microsoft carries a similar policy for their blogs. Don't be afraid of a negative comment or a employee saying something stupid. Put in place policies and procedures to establish posting policies and strictly enforce them.
Blogs are easy. If you are a busy business owner, you may not think you have time to write a blog post once or twice a week. You are wrong. If you find software you find easy to use, posting a message only takes a few minutes. I tend to write quickly so this entry will take less than 10 minutes of my day. Most of the time spent grabbing the links to the various off-site resources.
While the WSJ article spends a bit too much time on the negatives of blogs and message boards, it does highlight some of these benefits. If you've not launched your corporate blog yet, I suggest you get on board. If you are really apprehensive, consider posting on other's blogs first or perhaps starting a personal blog that has nothing to do with your business. Despite Isabel telling me so for nearly a year, I finally see how blogs can really help your business.
If you have any suggestions on features or enhancements to our blog, please let me know. It took me awhile to implement but I am now 100% behind this process.
