Lessons From Corporate Blogging

I've been attempting to understand the value of blogs, especially within the context of companies. I think the biggest benefit I have gained from my PR Communications blog is that the blog is a learning tool for the particular subject a blogger is blogging about. In my case, this is PR, Marketing and the Internet.

I was reading some of the comments made about the "Perfect Pitch for a weblog" on another blog and thought a blogger's comments worth recording for my own archive. Jeremy posted this comment on Robert Pateson's blog.

"Isn't effective selling all about illuminating the benefits a potential buyer will experience? When you're selling organizational blogging to an executive, you'd probably have to focus his/her attention on the improved productivity, innovation potential, or cost savings for the employees who would benefit most: researchers, analysts, strategists, maybe front-line information service workers. A subset of the people in an organization who are immersed in information, and have to formulate and articulate knowledge are more likely to enjoy the benefits we've experienced through blogging, but not all of them...and certainly not many of the people who have no need to (or interest in) processing and synthesizing ideas. The challenge isn't to convince the executive that blogging is good for its own sake (hopeless, anyway), but to help them see that some of their employees would see huge benefits and show them how that might work."

This appears to describe the experiences of technical staff at companies like Macromedia and Microsoft. Corporate blogging is both a communications tool, and a learning tool through shared community.