SCOUT Corporate Blogging

The Time Investment Archive

3.3 Time

posted: November 2, 2006 2:05 AM

It is important for companies to have a pre-existing website strategy for content creation and to understand the resources necessary to maintain a blog. One of the corporate bloggers, Aliza Sherman Risdahl, believes it takes time and dedication to be a successful corporate blogger, but a company should not expect to be successful if that company was not already successful with their other online efforts.  A company has to make the time to blog, and it is the principal issue for many bloggers. Here are some of the tasks a blogger has to conduct to be successful:

• Write posts
• Reply to comments from readers
• Monitor other blogs
• Keep up with the latest industry news
• Build relationships with other bloggers within a community.

Thus, when choosing a blogger, it is important to pick someone who actually has time available.

Realizing the limits to your resources is very important in starting a blog.  If you understand that your blogger may not be able to write on a regular basis, starting a multiple author blog can be a great way to get around the issue of any one individual having enough time.  A multiple author blog can help a company to launch a strong, content-rich blog.  The authors can write in different styles and might also take different responsibilities for commenting on other blogs or not.  A multiple author blog removes the responsibility for blogging from just one author and the chances for building a successful blog are much higher.

Cathy Taylor at Adweek explained that, due to the time constraints, the Adweek management decided the whole editorial staff would be able to contribute to the blog.  By having a number of people available to write on the Adweek blog, the company would always have content on the blog, but not overload any one individual blogger.

If a blogger does not have to take a lot of time to write, the amount of articles the blogger needs to write depends on the community. If you’re the blogging community in which you are involved is not very active, writing just a few times a week may mean a company still has the opportunity to build a successful blog.  If there is not a lot of activity in the community its easy to comment in blog posts on the community. Eventually, the amount of content that needs to be produced in a blog depends upon the company’s goals. If a particular community is very active and it is not possible for your blogger to keep up with their community, then it may make much more sense to commit resources to a different blogging community where you can have an effect.  (See the interview summary regarding the Stonyfield Farm blog in the appendix.)

Time is also an important factor when it comes to the quality of writing produced by a blogger.  Bloggers have discovered that their blog writing style produces more results as their understanding of their audience improves.  Honing the quality of their posts and the best way to connect with an audience can take time.

The time it takes to run a successful blog also changes with the growing success of a blog.  Tim Jackson of Masi Cycles runs marketing for Masi for the Haro Bicycle Corp.; he is literally a one-man marketing department.  While Tim initially found the time to write when he first launched his blog, the subsequent success of the blog created a challenge.  He does not have as much time to blog and monitor the community.  Tim is both a good example of a blogger who gained tremendous benefits and brand recognition in his community from blogging, but now that success has come, he has less time to blog.

Eric Anderson from Adobe explained that Macromedia/Adobe set up a number of blogs with its employees; in fact, the number of blogs at Macromedia grew so rapidly amongst employees and in the community that it was difficult to follow the whole community. There was so much Macromedia content on the blogs there was a need to search through all of the blogs in the community in one place.  As a result, Macromedia set up a blog aggregator for all of the RSS feeds from all of the employee and customer blogs about Macromedia products.  This saved a lot of time on the part of bloggers in the community in finding content.  The Macromedia related blog aggregator was created before sites like today’s popular technorati.com and other RSS feed aggregators. And by aggregating all of the content in the whole community in one place, including employees and customers, Macromedia was able to leverage the content on customers websites so that fewer Macromedia employees had to blog to provide coverage on a Macromedia product.  Setting up a community blog aggregator for your product or community can be a great way to empower individual blogs at your company by showcasing a company’s blogs within the community Effectively the community was helping to support Macromedia’s marketing efforts with additional content.

Blogger: Jeremy Pepper

posted: October 28, 2006 9:43 PM

1.1.17 Blogger: Jeremy Pepper

Student Interviewer: AnneMarie Martel
Blog: http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/

Jeremy Pepper is one of the earliest PR bloggers in the US market.  He started his Pop PR blog when he started his own PR agency.  Now working for a larger agency he continues to write his personal blog.

Jeremy thinks that any company can blog, but a company needs to have either the right person or the right corporate culture.  Jeremy went on to describe how Robert Scoble of Microsoft has really changed the impression of the company among its customers.  Jeremy said, "I can say without any issue that Robert Scoble has given Microsoft a friendly persona out there on the Internet. He’s given a face to the organization that’s different than Steve Balmer or Bill Gates. He’s made it warm and fuzzy. It’s no longer the evil empire. It’s just, “Oh this is the company Scoble works for!” It’s – It helps take off the taint that the company has had."  Jeremy went on to say, "He (Scoble) doesn’t talk about Microsoft all that much, but he is known as a Microsoft blogger."

Discussing the issue of what makes his blog successful, Jeremy said, “I think what draws the attention to my blog is my honesty.” And went onto say, “People know that I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. That I’m going to be out there. I’m going to be honest. I’m going to say what I’m thinking.”

Jeremy stated that that bloggers have to conduct a conversation with their audience, and that it’s important to reply to people who comment on a blog, to comment on other blogs, but not to comment for the sake for commenting, only when it fits in with a conversation.

Jeremy discussed how he thought that bloggers in the PR community should focus their blogging efforts on helping the PR community to improve their community.  Jeremy thought that to be successful in blogging takes a lot of time and a thick skin and some passion.