It seems over the past three months - each week we found something worth bringing to others attention about E-Marketing and E-Commerce. Stories ranging from E-Commerce startup tips, radical transparency, and hidden Intranets. I have enjoyed this project much more than other "final papers" - It gave us a chance to document happenings in the E-commerce world as they occurred. Although this isn't my first blog (check out coleorton.com/blog for juicy Apple and technology news, as well as monthly playlists of what I've been listening - plug), they can be a bit time consuming. There becomes a fine line between posting too much and posting too little. How much do you want to detail in your post versus just linking a story to your readers? You owe it to your readers to find that medium where you keep them interested - current - and up to date.
Like I mentioned above a slight disadvantage of blogging is the time you have to set aside to update your posts. I would also say that it is hard to attract readers to your view your blog - however popular blogs, such as gizmodo, engadget, digg, seem to attract their viewer virally - word of mouth promotions. If you have a good product online people are going to tell other people - which generates more hits per day. It's just hard to get that initial "buzz" around - I have yet to view the stats of this site - but I doubt a lot of people outside of this class have visited. However, the advantages of blogging is the timeliness of it. You can have immediate access via the Internet of breaking stories, products, or services you feel are important enough to share. I've sat through a couple of MacWorld keynotes that refresh themselves every 30 seconds to detail what Steve Jobs' next "bing thing" will be. Also - costs of blogs - especially this one is FREE. However, my own blog that I mentioned earlier is setup through godaddy.com, which costs me $50/year to run. So, you can set one of these up for next to nothing (especially from a corporate view).
As far as the merit of other commenting on my posts - I love it - it stirs conversation. I just wish more people did it on my own blog - it's gratifying that someone took a moment out of their time to comment rather than just being a passerby. As long as they don't completely deface your blog I enjoy when viewers leave comments (most blog sites allow you to monitor and allow/disallow comments before they are acutally posted to the web).
As far as blogging in the corporate setting - I believe my last post about radical transparency - proves that corporate blogs are indeed out there. These corporate blogs range from the Redfin real estate blog all the way to Microsoft's Channel9 blog. These corporate blogs allow their customers into the inner workings of large companies through the eyes of the people who go to work for them everyday - making customers slightly more at ease and makes these corporations less daunting and more believable.
As far as managerial advice to corporate blogs - be careful. Blogs are great if used properly. Don't allow all employees to post. Take a look at other successful corporate blogs and see what they've done to properly use blogs in a corporate environment.
And with that - this blog is complete.
2 comments:
I agree with most of what you say except 2 points. The first is that time spent onto maintaining a blog shouldnt be an issue because most people who keeps a blog do so because they enjoy it and they only update them when they have something they want to share. The second thing is that I disagree that employees shouldn't be allowed to post on company blogs. I believe one major reason for company blogs is to allow every employee an opportunity to voice their opinion in the company and be heard.
I agree with the other post about the time commitment. Cole, your blog has not been updated in a couple of months :-)
Enjoyed your blog. Cheers!
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