Many of the developer communities we’re involved with run corporate blogs – Adobe and IBM are shining lights in the spaces I work with. They:
- act as a conduit for client feedback
- facilitate corporate outbound communication (in a less-formal-than-media-release way)
- provide a window into the company
- put a personal face on the corporate image, especially if the writer is good and otherwise involved in the community (Sean Corfield comes to mind)
and overall, make the company look a whole world more engaged with their user base than companies whose presence is a brochureware wall.
Now, to this point, I’m probably preaching to the choir. However, some real research is being done into the whole notion of corporate blogging and what can make it a success. Over at Northeastern University, they and Backbone Media have produced a paper examining 20 successful corporate bloggers and delved into the factors driving that success.
It’s an interesting examination of the corporate blogging notion, and in a wonderful case of eating their own dog food, the entire paper is itself a series of blog posts.
Sadly, I can’t take credit for discovering this. Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion is the man.
