Put your money on a good company blog
February 21st 2009 21:22
There is a growing awareness, from chief executive officers to marketing directors to large and small investors, of a new corporate information platform.
It is credible, free, wide-reaching and accessible. And it is growing very, very quickly.
It is the corporate blog, and it is exciting because it is threatening to become all things to all people.
In January 2008, 54 of the Fortune 500 companies had corporate blogs. Just six months later the number had grown so quickly that, when independent research company, NASDAQ-listed Forrester Research, Inc, made a study of Fortune 500 blogs, it had to limit its research to 90 examples.
The study was picked up and reviewed by the The Wall Street Journal.
If the trend is growing quickly at the deep end of the business pool, however, it is growing just as quickly at the small business end and, in both cases, investors are perhaps the biggest winners of all.
The best way to describe the benefits of the blog for investors is to compare it with the closest thing previously on offer, the corporate newsletter. The traditional newsletter is printed by the hundreds, possibly thousands, and distributed once every month or two to a targeted audience. The company hopes the recipients will read it if a spare moment presents itself. The recipients will read it if they can spare the time, and if they remember where they put it.
Either way, the newsletter's appeal is at best lukewarm. The investor gets infrequent or irregular, and limited, information, and the company gets poor feedback.
Corporate blogging is still an under-developed area, but that does not mean undeveloped. It is already a sophisticated marketing tool due to uniquely powerful analysis capabilities. Imagine for a moment a mature corporate blog with hundreds, or more likely thousands, of daily visitors. Not only is this a completely focused audience, but the company can see at the click of a mouse button how they all found their way to the blog.
For the readers, there is new information, there is a body of existing, useful information, and the people providing it - the people in charge of the company or business or sector in which you are investing - are right there on the other side of the comment box, with a strong commitment (community building and reader interaction is a fundamental aim of blogging) to answering reader questions.
As they say, that's win-win.
Blogs are relevant and valuable to any size business. For big business, they are an immediate and efficient way to keep in touch with shareholders; to present company news, announce product developments and introduce senior management changes.
For smaller companies, blogs are a way to make the company and its managers a voice of authority in the sector, creating a community of voices through the comments. This can rapidly raise brand awareness and credibility.
For both large and small, the corporate blog is an unparalleled business tool for connecting with customers and investors.
As always, of course, there are caveats, and investors in particular should be aware that many business blogs are not professionally prepared and not all are ethically scrupulous. Take time to get to know the available blogs in your niche interest area, and compare the quality. A good blog should inform and educate.
According to the Forrester Research report mentioned earlier, most corporate blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion”. Two-thirds get few comments, 70 per cent post little other than general business topics with no added value, and 56 per cent do nothing except republish press releases or news which is already public knowledge.
Take note of the number of comments the blog attracts, and particularly of the quality of those comments. If the blog is attracting comments from the sector's leading analysts, managers and investors, then it is a melting pot of ideas, discussions and trends for the industry, a rich vein of information and advice which smaller investors can access, for free, in a way never known before. If it is attracting spam or crazies, then it is an unmoderated forum, which means unprofessional, and should be avoided.
For companies (and everything from government departments to museums to fund management firms to ice-cream makers), a business blog can provide public relations, branding and advertising benefits more cheaply, and often more effectively, than the traditional implementations of these marketing efforts.
A good blog will attract hundreds - perhaps thousands - of targeted, engaged readers every day, readers who are coming to the company's web site - to its home turf - rather than the other way around as in advertising, newsletters etc. And having attracted them, there are tools for counting them, for getting their feedback and ideas, their likes and dislikes, and for selling them something before they leave.
A blog can connect a company, its customers, its potential customers, its shareholders, the investing public and its industry community in a way that no other marketing tool has done before.
top image: technomarketer.typepad.com
Business Week, 2005
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Comment by Teresa Ralton
MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME
Comment by Chris Champion
moneywhither
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
I'm sure you're right. Sometimes, I wonder if the growth potential of blogging generally is being underestimated.
Or could the lines between blogging, email and social networking slowly blur until they merge into one big communication and information platform?
Comment by Teresa Ralton
MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME