Do You Have a Clog? – Corporate Blogging Advice

Are you a clogger? No, I’m not talking about dancing. I’m talking about corporate blogging. While corporate blogs sometimes lack the whiz-bang and pop of personal blogs, there are many benefits to owning a piece of real estate in the blogosphere. In fact, despite their reputation for being dry and witless, more than 60 Fortune 500 companies have embraced corporate blogging, demonstrating that success depends on careful planning and precise execution.

Besides just looking cool, clogs may actually help bridge disconnects between youthful consumers and a super-conventional corporations, showing young folks that even old companies can learn new tricks. If done right, clogs updated with regular new content give consumers a reason to keep coming back to corporate websites, boosting search engine visibility in the process. Clogging opens up another avenue to consumer dialogue, too, allowing the company to post new ideas, events, thoughts, etc., and letting the customer give direct feedback to the posts. Take GMC’s FastLane clog, where the car manufacturer keeps clients up-to-date on new technology, products, and its overall financial status.

The detriments to clogging can, in some cases, have the opposite effect of the pros – establishing and maintaining a clog can cost the company more than the perceived benefit. Though relatively easy and inexpensive to set up, the return on investment of clogging is difficult to gauge. Additionally, in most cases clogs do not receive a lot of web traffic and can open a company up to legal ramifications with objective content posted on a regular basis. Oftentimes clogging can be time consuming, yet the activity is largely ineffective without constantly updating postings with fresh content. Additionally, corporate blogging begs the question of what voice to use and then how and where to find the right writers to create the copy, or ghost-develop the text in the case of a company executive clog.

As if making the leap to clogging was not enough, corporations who choose to clog now have to decide what type of clog they want to use. Forms of clogs include a company blog (the most common type), a CEO blog, written or contributed to by company executives, an industry blog focused strictly on happenings in a company’s field, a department or product blog, and a customer service blog.

Obviously, given the potential benefits and pitfalls involved, there are many strategic decisions that have to be made before you commit to creating a clog. To get a good idea of some successful corporate blogs, check out the Official Google Blog, long considered the standard in clogging, Amazon.com’s Amazon Daily blog, and Whole Story, the official Whole Foods blog.