Blogs Still a Wild Frontier to Most Companies

Hitachi's got itself a blog evangelist. Global Web Marketing Manager, Jeremiah Owyang, says the company "has a blogging program underway" which will be public in the near future. "The wheels are big and require momentum."

Reality check: with all the heady big bucks investor news floating through the blogosphere this week, blogging is still the wild frontier to most publicly traded companies.

Corporate Blog Fear Factor
Frankly, I don't understand corporations' blog fear factor. A blog is just a website that uses software that makes it extremely easy to publish to the Internet. Blog software allows interactive conversation. Most corporate websites don't connect you to a real live human being or provide an email address for reaching one.

In the hands of the right designer (and they are few and very far between) blog software can be configured to be multi-media and to handle e-commerce that is only slightly less complex than the most sophisticated retail sites.

What makes popular blogs appealing to search engines - and readers - is that they:
* are frequently updated
* include news, useful information, and opinions
* contain lots of links to additional info sources
* have a low bullshit ratio
* invite readers to engage in conversation
* and above all, are interesting

If your corporate website doesn't share those characteristics, it's out of date. Time to move those big old wheels.

Comments

Post a comment

Email this story to a friend

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2687