on corporate blogging

Corporate blogging is another way of writing blogs. But this time, this kind of blog focuses on organizations and companies. Being a relatively new trend in blogging, corporate blogging is not yet embraced by every organization.

Here are some factors:

First, companies admit that they are not yet ready for this kind of advancement in technology. Some companies are still operating in the traditional way and are not yet that open to changes especially in terms of technology.

Second, companies do not have time to devote on this kind of activity—that it’s just a waste of time on their part. Companies think that corporate blogging will take a large chunk of their precious time which they can fully devote on more productive tasks.

Third, companies think that they do not have anything to say. Most companies think that their company’s intranet is enough to get people’s attention and to actually rely on their products and services.

On the contrary, corporate blogging can be beneficial for them in some ways:

First, aside from the intranet, blogging can be a form of advertising/promotion of a company. It is in blogging that they can make their companies known especially for those people who rely on the internet for information about companies.

Second, blogging is not a waste of time because one can write entries during his/her spare time. And blogging can be considered as a productive task since you are doing it for the sake of the company. In fact, the CEO or the president of the company may be the one to write and maintain their corporate blogs. In this way, the entries will be more credible and the structure will be cohesive and parallel.

Third, it is not true that companies do not have anything to say. In fact, they can use corporate blogging to promote their products or services. It is another avenue that companies can take in promoting their services, aside from the traditional means. They can also use blogging to answer their clients’ or customers’ concerns about their products and services because blogging provides space for the company to actually explain to their customers the things that they want to know.

These only goes to show how corporate blogging can help companies in their businesses. It may be new to them.. it may sound too technical.. but it’s up to them to maximize its use and make it work for their advantage. 🙂

micro blogging

Blogging has been going on for quite some time now, and a lot of people now enjoy blogging more than anything else.

We are very used to the fact that blogging consists of very long entries about a person’s life—may it be personal, professional, etc. But as time passes by, there are also developments and new trends in blogging. Most prominent is the emergence of Twitter and Plurk where people can now blog using limited characters only—and that is what we now call micro blogging.

twitter

plurk

Micro blogging is a very interesting form of blogging since a person is given limited number of characters. This is a good practice for copyrighting because a person is challenged to say what he/she wants to say in the shortest way possible. And it’s not just about saying things. It’s about making those words matter in order to catch people’s attention.

This new trend in blogging also addresses people’s short attention span when it comes to writing and reading blog entries. Micro blogging makes it easier and is more convenient for people should they intend to build continuous conversations with their followers (readers).

However, the challenge for those bloggers who are still using the traditional way of blogging is to make their blog entries more interesting and ‘attention-catching’ so as to make their readers stick to their sites and read their entire entries.

As for me, I’m still attached to this kind of blogging—the traditional one. I still find it hard to convey my message using limited characters. Also, I enjoy the freedom I get from traditional blogging in terms of the length of my entries. Maybe the right time will come for me to finally embrace micro blogging.

But as for now, I’d stick with this one. 🙂

organizations and social networking sites

Social networking sites are now very eminent to people of all ages. It is through this kind of new social media that people meet and create different kinds of relationships with other people. Facebook, Friendster, multiply, blogger, twitter and plurk are just some examples of these social networking sites.

As we all know, people join these sites solely for interaction and networking. But there’s this new trend going on in the corporate world where companies are now slowly penetrating the world of new social media, particularly these social networking sites.

To give examples, here are a number of instances where different kinds of organizations opt to enter the cyber world—that is, the new social media.

• For recruitment / For hiring

“Perimeter eSecurity is the trusted market leader of information security services that delivers enterprise-class protection and compliance for businesses of any size”. Aside from JobStreet.com, they also use Facebook in their recruitment.

Social networking sites may be very helpful for any organization in terms of hiring and recruitment because sites like facebook can serve as an instrument for companies to actually know their prospective employees more and most importantly, to start building good and lasting relationships with these people.

• For new businesses

FYI is an events team which specializes in debuts, weddings, and the like. It’s a relatively new organization and is currently using Multiply in their business. It is through this social networking site that they get their customers and continuously build relationships with them.

FYI acknowledges the fact that a lot of Filipinos now are going online; thus, they followed where their target market are. And as a starting business, going online reduces their costs and maximizes their productivity and profit.

• For campaigns

Unilever recently had their 7-day challenge campaign for Pond’s. In this campaign, Unilever tapped young beauty bloggers, gave them free samples of their pond’s product, asked these bloggers to try their products and blog about their experience in using them.

For me, Unilever’s use of blogs for their campaign is a good way of penetrating the world of new social media where a lot of their target markets are in. It is also good to know that Unilever acknowledged the fact that a lot of Filipinos are wiser now and are not anymore relying on advertisements about beauty products, especially those that have celebrity endorsers because they know that these people are already beautiful and flawless even without the use of the beauty products they are endorsing. So the use of blogs is just right because the accounts/testimonials are coming from real (ordinary) people, talking about real results.

These companies/organizations are just some of the numerous companies which use social media, particularly social networking sites for their businesses. This only goes to show how different kinds of organizations can utilize these social networking sites for their advantage and further success.

How about you? If you have your own company, would you consider using social networking sites for you business? Why or why not? 🙂