The blogging milestone is soon to be upon the corporate world in Malaysia. With such a huge feature covered in the InTech section of The Star, that should probably bang some ideas into heads. It was a pretty good article written with early mention of the recent Singapore bloggers conference. So when is PPS or Malaysian blogosphere going to organize a conference? I’d like to be one of the speakers later. ROFL!
Anyway, the corporate blogging article mentioned huge players from Oracle to IBM and to supposedly small company, XiM Malaysia. If you noticed, out of all the bloggers mentioned I think the only blogger who isn’t related too much to geektopia is Wiley Chin. He runs the blog labeled, The Lab from XiMs own website. His entries derive from his latest readings to humorous bumper stickers and very little regard of his own work.
So how believing is corporate blogging?
Well, as mentioned clearly and many times in the printed article, bloggers under corporations are given bylaws. You’re barred from definetely speaking if you’re unhappy with either client or company. You aren’t allowed to bad-mouth or say what’s in your honest mind about something that should’ve been said during a meeting. All because you’re constrained to the agreement of protecting the peace.
I could understand office politics could really turn the company upside down and even worst, destroy the company. On account of content being king most of the time, when do we know if the content presented to us is make believe? People read blogs because they are the personal side and word from the author or owner themselves. They don’t want a hard*ss chick being turned into a goldilocks. Content pretend is a serious crime in blogging and once find out would mean a downfall.
One downfall many corporate bloggers might know or would want to know is the incident of The Raging Cow. I shan’t go into that but let you proceed to The Raging Cow Boycott website for a read.
As some might already know, in the US there are even jobs hiring bloggers. Reason for this comes when there isn’t any experienced content writers for the Internet. They can’t ask the copywriter to handle the job if he/she doesn’t have experienced in blogging. Why? Well, because the copywriter might beautify all posts in good name of the company resulting in fake posts later.
As to using a blog as a marketing tool, I’ll post about this later.
Starting a blog on the company website is easy. Just install any publishing CMS, put a link or advertise on the corporate website of a new feature being a blog and ta-da! instant blog existence. However, now comes the next challenge. Customizing the blog so that it sells its content as well as the service you’re trying to offer.
Sure you can brainwash your readers with the content you’re presenting, but if the content isn’t in relation to what you do and how the company does it then how do you sell your services?
I’m still absorbing ideas whilst the revamp is still in the workshop. But my best suggestion is read blogs like ProBlogger, AlmostCool and other blogs speaking on achieving a successful blog. I hope to be somewhere in this line once I get that revamp out of the workshop.
Apologies for taking quite some time with it. I’m stuck trying to figure how it’ll work and choosing what CMS publishing I could use with it. :)
Concluding this post; I’d just like to say if you would like to design your blog, I’m continuously learning the ins and outs of having a good blog design. Just drop me an email; me at dannyfoo dot com if you’d like to discuss a blog design or have any queries on setting up a corporate blog.