Corporations have been implementing internal blogs, RSS publishing and there is even some experimentation with micro-blogging, ala Twitter. Yet many still are hesitating at the gate as to whether they will make an entry into corporate blogging.

Marriott Corporate Blog

There can be no predicting how each corporate voice will be judged, outside of the standard litmus tests of authenticity and transparency.

Bill Marriott seems to be faring well with his foray into the blogosphere and a great deal can be credited to his voice, his demeanor translates as sincere. Having kept an eye on it since it debuted, it has been interesting to observe their willingness to experiment, e.g., online employee contests, the addition of podcast marketing, and uploading video to YouTube.

And that touches on why some corporations still hesitate inside the gate. Along with Marriott videos is a news video over a “bedbug” lawsuit. (click image)

But the preponderance of online evidence weighs in Marriott’s favor. Their blog gets good comments from appreciative guests and any bedbug issues are reduced to the slight hiccup that they represent.

Blogging Through the Criticism

Medical blogging is also on the rise, with Johnson and Johnson leaving the gate in July with their JNJ BTW, blogged by J&J PR exec Marc Monseau.

A recent review leans towards critical, ending by saying J&J’s new blog is the “Pravda of J&J”. Monseau responds in a post a few days later:

“This debate has a particular relevance to me…For instance, last week Jim Edwards at BrandWeek NrX compared JNJ BTW to Pravda…To support his premise, Jim cited my attempts to define what I would talk about on the blog through some posts that I’ve made.

In fact, I wrote the posts Jim mentioned to be more transparent. I wanted to help readers understand my limits and to provide some insight into why I don’t elaborate on lawsuits or on speculation about acquisitions….”
(Source)

And that is how it goes. The conversation goes back and forth and the brands are further defined by the dialog. I think both Marriott and J&J are both going in the right direction.

Those corporations still hesitating at the gate need to move on out. It isn’t all that scary a world out here.

Corporate RSS publishing has proven invaluable for those organizations who blog internally. It has streamlined communication, been of great value in collaborative efforts, and greatly decimated the dreaded daily deluge of email.

Corporate Blogging Needs a Blog Leader

When a corporation adopts external blog marketing in addition to internal blogging, it is strongly recommended that the corporate blogging department coordinate all of these efforts with IT, who, after implementing a content management system does not want the additional responsibility of being a corporate blog cop as well.

Sandra Gittlen in ComputerWorld describes the organizational model that California’s Saugus Union School District is creating in establishing responsibilities around the areas of defamation and liabilities across all of their social networking efforts.

“…Klein, who is director of information services and technology, didn’t want IT to become the blog police. To avoid that, he put controls in place so that both IT and the school district are protected from users running amok. “The way we handle it is that if a business unit wants to start blogging, then a leader has to manage those blogs,” he says.
[..]
Another key element is that leaders and users must be clear about community expectations.
[..]
Klein researched his district’s rules of conduct, as well as state and federal guidelines and IBM’s blogging policy, before developing an acceptable-use policy. It covers text, video and other multimedia materials”
(source)

Data from a recent press release from security specialists Proofpoint, quoted below, emphasizes the need for corporations that seriously intend to embrace social networking to establish a dedicated department headed by a “blog leader” who has prepared for all contingencies.

Corporate Blogging Concerns

• In the past 12 months, 21.4% of companies surveyed had investigated the exposure of sensitive information via blog or message board postings, while 19.2% disciplined and 9.1% terminated employees for such infractions.
• In the past 12 months, 12.4% of publicly traded companies surveyed had investigated the exposure of material information via blog or message board postings.
• 48.7% of companies are very concerned or concerned about Web-based email as a conduit for exposure of confidential or proprietary information. Respondents are also very concerned about FTP, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networks, media sharing sites, blogs and message boards as potential conduits for data loss.

RSS publishing has no doubt revolutionized the way you can distribute critical information, be it utilized as a pipeline to your customers or a means of disseminating internal corporate communications. In some instances, it has edged out email as a means of direct contact.

Corporate RSS Publishing Saves Money

Which tools you use depends on the context and the audience being served.For example, FastCompany.com reports that Union Bank of California’s adoption of corporate RSS communications is eliminating a good deal of useless internal email, and saving money .

“Not all of Union Bank of California’s more than 10,000 employees need to see the information that goes out in countless email broadcasts every day. “They are crucial for some people but irrelevant to the majority,” says James Penn, the bank’s VP of marketing. So Union Bank is replacing broadcast emails with targeted RSS Web feeds… The new system… will send RSS feeds based on job description and location… Penn estimates that they will get back 30 minutes a week in the first year, which the company conservatively figures will save in excess of $750,000.”

However, the same company might still lean heavily on e-mail combined with RSS feeds when communicating with their customers. A recent study suggests that a combination of communication tools serves best.

Communicating Through Several Channels

“This point was driven home solidly this week when I read the results of Rafat Ali’s PaidContent survey of readers. Below is the breakdown for how people consume the site’s information, according to the survey:

• E-mail newsletter: 42%
• Paidcontent.org website: 34%
• RSS Reader: 19%
• Mobile Device: 4%

Along the same lines, DirectMag.com reports Radiator.com experienced higher conversion rates by directing their online customers to make an old fashioned phone call.

“Radiator.com reported its conversion rate for Web site visitors to buyers has increased to 35% to 40% since it added a click-to-call feature to its online chat customer service. Its online customer conversion rate previously ranged from 1% to 2%.”

Be it internal company communications or delivering content to your target market,survey all of the tools available for your use and employ those that best serves your audience and translates into a heftier bottom line. Studying the results of your marketing campaigns will inform you of what the majority of your customers are using to stay in touch with you.

Channel Register explores the benefits to business of enterprise RSS. RSS has its benefits not just to executives and marketing departments in following news, but also internally to distribute news and project information. One way to do this is through a private internal blog system. However, maintaining RSS software company wide could be an IT nightmare.

A solution is an enterprise RSS solution. A single RSS solution can be deployed, and alerts can be managed company wide, saving bandwidth and employee time. Specific sets of feeds can een be set of for project groups. A benefit of RSS not to be overlooked is its permanency and searchability. Whereas email tends to die once it’s read, blog posts can be read and searched over time.

The blog of Ralston Ventures has 5 interesting arguments that companies put forward NOT to have RSS feeds on their websites. It includes arguments for RSS feeds. Very interesting reading.

1. Someone else will use my content
There are techniques to stop feed scrapers.

2. Nobody will click-thru to my website.
It’s more important for people to read your content and stay up to date with your content than for people to click through. Click throughs don’t mean that people read your content.

3. RSS is too technical, email works for my customers.
No reason why you can’t have both. They’re just two ways that people like to read your content. And besides, RSS feeds are received unfiltered, whereas email can be mistaken for spam.

4. I can’t make money on a RSS feed.
Yes you can. Companies like Feedburner monetize feeds.

5. RSS feeds require content which requires creativity which requires work which requires time.
Not any more than having a blog. But having a blog has numerous other benefits such as search engine optimization and increased visits.

Darren Rowse conducted a poll recently among his readers on reasons why they would unsubscribe from a feed.

The one main reason I would unsubscribe is when the bulk of the content of a feed becomes less than relevant to me. I won’t list all 34 reasons Darren’s readers came up with. Here are the top ones.

• Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming)
• Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead)
• Partial Excerpts Feeds
• Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting)
• Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News)
• Uninteresting Content
• Irrelevant Content
• The Blogger’s Ego - Too much self promotion
• Low Quality Content
• Too many posts that are too long

Russel Morgan of PC Mag discusses the in’s and out’s of business blogging.

First, don’t be afraid of it. The technology is not as hard as you may think. More and more consumers are online, and thoughtful ways to approach them can help build you a sustainable community to grow your business.

Some tips from the article:

• Starting small is ok. Hosted services such as Typepad give you flexibility with less technical knowledge required.
• Make a commitment. A badly updated blog is worse than no blog at all.
• Network. Communities don’t blossom out of nowhere. They evolve through thoughtful interaction.

In a June post, Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum cites a couple of quotes about Web 2 from “two of the biggest marketers in the world”; GM and Procter & Gamble .

GM’s Michael Wiley declares that “The existing advertising paradigm sucks,” he said. “It’s woefully inefficient. We give consumers virtually no information.” adding that “We see the new social media space as a place we can become engaged.”

A little more reserved evaluation of social networking comes from brand giant Procter and Gamble’s Stan Joosten who sets a more cautious pace.
“We have to stay out of some places” where people don’t want to see ads…he says P&G wants to engage with customers wherever they are online. “People want to talk about things they care about and you give them a platform to do that.”
Always curious as to how corporate culture gets translated into the blogger medium, I compared their two efforts. GM conforms more closely to the blogger paradigm of engaged conversation and transparency. As Wiley’s remarks seems to suggest, GM set out to “engage” and to communicate. Judging by Fast Lane Blog and FYI Blog, they are doing an excellent job doing just that.

Proctor & Gamble’s Web 2 ventures, - Vocal Point, Tremors Teen and Capessa -seem to suggest a different model. While GM engages you in dialog, P&G observes you while you engage in dialog with other members. If you go through the hassle of signing up.

And that is the difference between the two approaches towards creating a community. P & G’s neighborhood is gated by virtue of an immediate membership request. And at this point, unless you are a woman or a teenager, P&G hasn’t built your community yet. Once inside the gates, you will visit the topics P&G has determined are of mutual interest . The interaction is between members, not between the corporate giant and their consumers.

Perhaps because I tend by nature to be a soloist, indeed, a very reluctant joiner, I found P&G’s tact a bit off putting. They have indeed provided a “platform” that will garner them a wealth of marketing data, but I think it falls short of the authenticity and ease of exchange that the more standard blog model offers.

So, have you checked your referral stats, gone into Feedburner, and been surprised at how many Google subscribers you have?

You may be nodding or not. It seems to be varying according to niche, but one thing is clearly apparent: for business-related blogs, Google is dominating.

Small Business Trends is reporting that 72% of subscribers, over 11,000 subscribers, are now listed for Google. Not only did that change the dynamics of the list, but more than tripled the subscriber information being reported.

Some information to glean from this new trend: we are now armed with more information about who our readers are and what they read, and we now know the importance Google will play in the future of RSS.

Steve Rubel had a peek into a recently-released 15-page white paper from Forrester Research entitled The ROI of Blogging. It explores various quantifiable ways of justifying the returns on corporate blogging efforts, depending on the objectives of the corporate blog.

The stated objectives being:

1. Increased brand visibility
2. Gaining consumer insight
3. Reduced impact from negative user-generated content
4. Increased sales efficiency

Basically, the methods they use are based on how much the corporation would have to pay to achieve similar results.

I felt that there was a glaring omission from the objectives.

5. Improved search engine rankings.

But following Forrester’s method, I would argue that the ROI of that objective would be how much a SEO consultancy would charge for similar results.

Read more about Steve Rubel’s opinions and Forrester’s ROI methods.