The Retail / Corporate Blog Effect
JupiterResearch released a report in June 6, 2006 that shows 35 percent of large companies plan to institute corporate Weblogs this year. Combined at the time with the deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of all corporate website operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006.
Not to question the analysts at JupiterResearch, but I think that their numbers might be bloated (coupled with the fact I now have the 20-20 hind-site at the years end). While I think some companies are on the forefront of web technology, others are asking “why do I need a blog?” It’s a tricky question to consider until you’ve actually got one going and see how you use it and how your customers respond. From a retail standpoint, the corporate blog seems to be part newsletter, part customer support, part message board and part press release. But I still think it has yet to prove its position in the marketing mix.
With blogging I’m seeing a little deja-vu of the early to mid 90’s where the world was buzzing about Web 1.0. Those were the good-old-days when some corporations asked the question “why do I need a website” and then sat back while other visionary companies innovated and showed them. Now building a website for your company is as necessary as having a 1-800 number. Will Web 2.0 have the same impact? What will be the Web 2.0 Corporate Blog effect?
Let’s look at a couple corporations who are using blogs.
Dell Corporate Blog - One2One
Dell jumped on the blog scene back in July of this year and was one of the first large companies that I heard of that blogged. According to their blog they simply started blogging “…to address issues that are important to our customers.” But as a corporate blog, they had to publish all the fine print such as “Civil dialogue is expected”.
GM Corporate Blog
GM who has blog posts beginning in January of 2005 on their Fastlane Blog (more corporate) and in April of 2006 FYI Blog (more fun) is also another innovator in corporate blogging.
Yahoo “Corporate” Blog (They only lightly call themselves corporate)
Yahoo, who has started numerous product blogs previous to launching their Yodel Anecdotal blog said this about corporate blogging:
We want to share insights into our company, our people, our culture, and the things that occupy our cluttered minds. We’ll cover emerging trends, provide some behind-the-scenes commentary, profile interesting Yahoos, spotlight our beloved users, reveal some of our quirks, tap into guest bloggers, sprinkle in some videos and photo essays, and generally think out loud (lucky you… you get to listen). You’ll hear from interns to executives. Some days we’ll be light and airy, others we’ll get serious.
How Retailers Blog
What prompted my idea to do this post was a recent email I recieved from the webmaster of Scribble. (I posted about Scribble last week.) He stated that most of their traffic thus far had come from blog posts like mine, and wondered how a blog could benefit their company. Here’s my response:
Integrating “Web 2.0″ features into the commerce process has been the latest and greatest thing to do it seems. I think that threadless (http://www.threadless.com) has done an excellent job of this. Getting user feedback, comments, blogging, etc has made it possible for customers to interact with the retailer directly as well as make the product fun.Another good example of using a blog in a retail sense is Moo cards (http://www.moo.com) and their blog. They show how people use their product (for photos they use Flickr.com), and keep customers updated on new features on their website.
And of course blik - a similar product to Scribble - has jumped on the blog bandwagon and use a blog to promote their product and company. (http://whatisblik.blogspot.com/)
Not only does a blog keep a website “fresh” but it is an easy way to solicit feedback from your customers. Search engines love the fresh content and the enchanged links while users enjoy “subscribing” (RSS) to your feed and keeping on top of the latest and greatest you have to offer.
While I think retail/corporate blogging is still in it’s infancy much like the “you need to get a website” of the mid 90’s, I think we can expect to see a lot more of blogging in the future.
And I suppose that was what my blog post was really about.