Business blogs seem to be catching on, but it’s not the wildfire of the personal blogging revolution. Dancho Danchev has done a magnificent job writing up the slow adoption rate of businesses, particularly larger companies.
No better example of the slow adaption than the surprisingly few Fortune 500 companies that have adapted blogs. Check out who’s blogging on the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. It’s no surprise that the companies listed are either technology companies or companies that have strong histories of innovative marketing.
Nuts about Southwest is a great blog, and the employees are the ones executing the entries. But given the company’s history of innovation and well-documented culture, this blog is no surprise. Another really fun one (and timely, too, my March Madness friends) is the Nike Basketball Blog, which features interviews with NBA greats. What a great way to engage your target audience.
Here’s the deal. Innovative business people are blogging. Period. It’s no surprise which ones of these companies are blogging and which ones aren’t (sorry AT&T, IBM and any financial institution). The ones that don’t are always the ones that have to defend non-blogging vehemently. And the businesses that are blogging, well they see results, whether it’s a St. Louis-based recruiter or GM’s Fastlane.
For interested business bloggers, you have many resources at your disposal. There are companies like mine that help you set up blogs. There are those who simply blog about business blogging (like SuccessCREEations) who can coach you through the art of blogging. And you can always hire a blogger internally like the newspapers do. The key is to create content of interest, to build value and to engage your audience (See RSS Applied) for more on this.
Geoff, Thanks for the mention and the link!
You make a great point about the fact that innovative business people are blogging. I can’t agree more.
I think you will find that among the early adapters are many folks who already spend tons on advertising and understand the value of marketing. For example Mortgage Brokers are jumping on the blogwagon along with huge portions of the Real Estate industry.
And in defense of IBM they do have quite a bit of internal blogging going on. The people I’ve talked to over at Big Blue are generally very positive towards blogging.
But you are right. How much more could they benefit from some public external blogs? I bet a lot.
Thanks for the link, Geoff. Business blogging is slow to catch on because the perceived value is hard to measure.
It will do much better when companies treat blogging as a skill like cold-calling, or filing, or writing great copy.
I’ve spent the last year speaking to several large companies, and every single one of them has a “blogging initiative.” They are spending lots of time studying it, but don’t seem to have the confidence to just jump in.
Hi Geoff,
Thanks so much for the link to Nuts About Southwest. As one of our blog team, we are very proud of the efforts of our Employee bloggers.
Brian