Corporate Blogging: A new marketing tool for companies

Generally, a corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads.

Basically there are two types of blogs. Firstly would be the internal blog which are accessed through the corporation's Intranet and is a weblog that any employee can view. Internal blogs may be used in meetings and e-mail discussions that are useful when the people involved are in different locations or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise.

Another blog would be the external blog which are publicly available weblog where company employees, teams or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services, explain and clarify policies or to react on public criticism on certain issues. Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide. External corporate blogs, by their very nature are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

As for the communication tool, marketers might expect to have product influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits. Furthermore, leaders can communicate directly with customers, investors and suppliers in explaining and introducing the new product. Next, corporate blogging will have a broad impact on the nature of online media. Moreover, the public would mark the organization as an authentic and forward looking organisation. Furthermore, corporate blogging would have a positive effect on the company's reputation.