About this Blog

This blog talks about corporate blogs and bloggers. I have picked corporations that have blogs, most are fortune 500 companies.  There are case studies on corporation’s blogs, and I have analyzed how each blog runs, and who writes the posts. At the end of each post I have strategies the company has used with their blog. Readers will gain knowledge of what possibilities to follow when creating their own company blog, and what to avoid.

Dell’s Blog

For most people in corporate communications they know about DellHell. The story of Dell making a 360 back to having a good reputation. The behind story is pretty long, here is a link to Jeff Jarvis’ archive posts talking about how Dell computers suck. The gist of the story is that Dell did not listen and were nieve to the power of blogs. Jarvis was a pretty well known blogger, and when he was gypped of his in home warranty all hell broke loose. He let whom ever was interested in reading, know how Dell Sucks and how Dell Lies. His posts about Dell have hundreds of comments agreeing in their hatred for the company. So how did Dell do it how did they gain the respect from customers again? Dell finally got it, possibly after recieving a letter from Jarvis basically saying, if Dell did not start to listen to customers, and improve customer service, they would not be loosing just one customer, but many of that customers friends. Jarvis explains that Dell needs to jump on the bandwagon and start checking the internet and blogs, to see who is talking about their company. DellHell happened back in 2006, and now Dell has improved their reputation, by creating Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm. Here is a video from Ragan Communications with an interview with Vida Killian, who manages Dells Ideastorm. The video talks about Dells blogs.  Dells internal blogs, are taking over their email systems, and encourages employees to express ideas. There are focus groups in their internal blog, OneDellWay, which are team written. Michael Dell gets involved in the posts and does leave comments. One of their popular blogs is is Direct2Dell which is their external blog. Killians explains it as a way for Dell letting their audience know what is going on with Dell, which is different from their Ideastorm which is more of their customers giving ideas.

Dell’s IdeaStorm is just like My Starbucks Idea. The video below explains how people can post ideas, where comments can be posted, adding to the idea. Then ideas will be voted on and if one idea gets a lot of votes, Dell might implement the idea.

With the use of social media and actually making a change to listen to customers, Dell has gotten back in the game. They have a better reputation, but will always have DellHell reminding them to keep on track.

Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation

In past posts I have been talking about company blogs that are open to be viewed by the public, because many of their customers are all over the world, and having a blog is a simple way to talk with everyone. This is a great thing, however, some companies just have internal blogs, that only employees can access, and communicate through. Companies should not forget that employees are an important public. Best Buy has created Blue Shirt Nation (BSN) a social network for their employees to communicate with each other. Blue Shirt Nation started back in 2006 with the idea from Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling, corporate marketers, who wanted to learn customer insight, from employees on the sales floor. In Harnessing the Power of the Oh-So-Social Web it explains how Bendt and Koelling wanted to promote BSN bottom-up so they went store to store promoting their project. In about 2 months their were 14,000 members. The employees enjoy having a place where they can all connect, and talk. They ask questions about how to deal with a customer situation, to just  enjoying getting to know each other.

This video has an interview with Bendt and Koelling talking about BSN. Employees love having their own place to chat, and talk about how to solve problems with customer questions, ask about operational procedures, and also be able to joke around with each other. Bendt and Koelling have notice an increase in efficiency, things getting fixed quicker, when something might have taken weeks to get fixed, being able to communicate and read posts, gets things noticed and fixed in a couple of days. It was also mentioned that with BSN it is a way for  Best Buy employees to practice being social, and they know how to act like real people.

American Airlines used to be Blog

This post I will be talking about a blog that is no longer active. First off, having a corporate blog is very helpful, but it can only be successful, when it has been planned out, and taken seriously. It is better to not have a blog, than to start one and not keep up with it. In Shel Holtz post titled American Airlines’ Quiet Launch of a Crisis Blog he foreshadowed the ending of American Airlines blog, commenting on how a company should not start a blog due to a crisis. It is much better to already have a community and trust with readers beforehand. AA started their blog back in 2008 and only got to 3 posts it seem like, since it is no longer active I can not check. In another post titled New American Airlines Blog Could Use Some Work it mentions that posts from the AA blog were not updated often, not helpful and confusing to read.

Hopefully American Airlines is studying other Airlines like Southwest and Delta who have successful blogs, to base off of to start a new one. Like Holtz said, if they were honest in the fact that they started the AAConversations blog to listen to their customers and wanted to see comments, then hopefully we will see a new one sometime soon. One good thing they did do, was to deactivate their blogger account, rather having an inactive blog which would bring down their reputation even more. Holtzs also mentions how they did not even announce having a blog, so if they do start a new one, hopefully it will be linked to their homepage.

Take Away:
- Do not create a blog, for the sole purpose to better your reputation. Good reputation will come due to the fact that you created a blog for your audiences.
- Update frequently
- Proofread to make sure posts make sense
- Have relevant information

Walmart’s Blog

So for the past could of weeks I have been finding successful corporate blogs and explaining how each of them have been maintained and used. All of the blogs have been helpful for each company, especially building relationship and trust with their customers. I thought I would switch up the gears and find a company that has not used their blog correctly. Walmart is known by everyone, which is not necessarily a good thing, there is a bitter sweet feeling towards Walmart. A Blogger’s Manifesto and BusinessWeek goes in to the story of Walmarts attempt to bring back some reputation by starting a blog. However, it was not Walmart working on a blog, it was their PR company Edelman who created a sponsored trip called “Working Families for Walmart” which consisted of a normal American couple who drove to all different Walmarts across the country. They interviewed employees at these Walmarts, and would blog about the impressions they got, which were all positive. “Walmarting Across America” would be considered a “flog” a fake blog, even though it turns out that Jim and Laura, the two travelers, were real and were paid to do this by Walmart. The point of the story is, even though it might have been real people blogging interestingly enough about all postive feedback from Walmart employees, it was a sneaky untrustworthy way of trying to blog. This is a big NO NO in the blogosphere, the only way a blog can work is to be open and honest and have no alternative motives behind it. Walmart just worsened their reputation by not using a blog correctly. A blog should be used to help its customers, which in turn helps your company, but still the customer was put first.

I found Walmarts new blog, started in 2007 (the flog was back in 2006) called Check Out: Where The Lanes Are All Open. I went to their about page, which most company blogs I have been to, have had very informative and helpful descriptions of how they want to use their blog, and encourage feedback and want to build relationships. Walmart’s about page was dull, and not very encouraging. I must say though this blog does seem to be on the right path, it has many categories to read about and a specialized employee to write on each category. I  browsed through some of the comments and there was some dialogue between Walmart and the commenter’s.

Problems:

- Don’t use a company blog to just promote your company remember customers come first

- As a company make sure to not to ignore the negative. If there is something negative being said about your company, you want to chime in and give your side of the story or talk about it on a blog to let your customers know what is happening. Don’t ignore it, deal with it and work with it to fix it.

- Never lie or pay non-employees to write for your blog

“My Starbucks Idea” and Blog

What are your thoughts about Starbucks, do you have good experiences when you go to one, are you happy with the product selection? Possibly have ideas for Starbucks? Well Starbucks has a site similar to Dell’s IdeaStorm which will be mention in a later post. It is called My Starbucks Idea where anyone can share an idea which can be commented on, and ranked. You can look at all other ideas and leave comments and vote up or down to give positive or negative points. However, to be able to do so, one has to create an account. To learn more about this system I created an account which was very simple you just need an ID name, password, email, and screen name. Without an account you can still view their Ideas in Action Blog and About page.
With an account there are three main categories you can share your idea on: products, your experience, and Starbucks’ involvement, such as social responsibility. Underneath each categories are sub categories to choose from. Along with sharing your ideas, and viewing what others have posted, you can even look at their blog which has the ideas that are under review, that have been reviewed, that are coming soon, and ideas that have been launched. The most recent post was March 19th which actually explained that day being the one year anniversary of My Starbucks Idea. It explained there have been 70,000 ideas, 95 of which have been put into action, and Starbucks enjoys and encourages people to give ideas, thanks for keeping their community exciting.

This USA Today article has some of the information I have already posted. I thought it was a good source talking about how Starbucks is using ideas as an opportunity for growth in the company and creates a interactive community.

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Strategy:

- A place for customers to feel apart of the company by giving ideas that can be voted for use.
- Having a blog keeping updates on ideas that are being launched and thought about
-easy to use

IBM Blog

In recent posts I have been talking about how companies are effectively using a company blog to reach out to their constituents and receiving comments and feedback as a result. They are building relationships, which is great for a company. In many of the articles I have read on corporate blogs IBM has been mentioned. So I decided to research more about IBM. What was found was somewhat interesting because their blog has a different feel. In the article Corporate Blogging Best Practices the author talks about how IBM encourages their employees to openly blog internally and externally. IBM has a community blog, which is called DeveloperWorks Community. IBM’s community blog consists of thousands of employees, developers, program managers. If you check out the link you can see how it work, its like a aggregation which holds all the new posts from each author listed. However, anyone can search posts by most popular, title, or author. What it seems like is that the employees that blog either do on their personal blogs or have a personal blog but, IBM has a guidelines to follow. In Corporate Blogging Best Practices and in the book Radically Transparent IBM mention for their guidelines. Their terms and conditions for their bloggers, is one big reason IBM has been mentioned in articles. Mostly based on how they created them, by asking employees who were currently bloggers to use a wiki to give what they thought was appropriate guidelines to have. The outcome was over a hundred responses, that build a constructive terms and conditions; and instead of just setting them for the employees, and going directly too them builds respect and communication within the company. This video goes more into it:

One point that has been mentioned in two separate case studies 1 and 2 on IBM was that their blogs were not getting much feedback and little customer support. Bill Higgins, a system engineer and blogger for IBM, was interviewed in both case studies. He brought up a intriguing point about how IBM is not too concerned with not getting feedback, he still feels there is a community, and at least they are getting their information out in a timely fashion to anyone who has an interest.

Strategy:
-Community Blog
-Recent Posts
-Effective guidelines

Southwest Airlines Blog

Media Rules! talks about how Southwest Airlines is known for putting their customers first, and got well known because they were willing to do what other airlines weren’t. With this mentality they build strong relationships with their customers and build up their brand. When they first started their blog people thought it was a crazy idea, however, Southwest has learned the benefits of having one. This video explains how they have successfully used a blog to help their company improve their boarding system and listen to their customers and in the end everyone was happy.

Southwests blog is different from Sun Microsystems and GM’s, who have CEO’s that write their companies most popular blogs. Radically Transparent mentions Southwest having a company team blog with the opinions and ideas from multiple employees. Letting employees blog allows Southwest to be more humanized and transparent, with someone talking more on the customer level. On their “Nuts About Southwest” blog,  ‘About‘  page they encourage a relationship with their customers saying things like this site is for their customers and they are ready for them to participate. They have a fun attitude and genuinely want to make their customers happy. They explain how they  moderate the blog, to make sure people stay on topic and weed out any profanity or rude comments. It is also explained that their blog is not a forum for customer support issues since part of the team leaving posts or answering comments are flight crew members that might be flying.  So a quick answer would not be possible. Southwests About page was very helpful for me because they explain exactly what they want to gain by having a blog, and I also gained knowledge about their mentality as a company.  I found Southwest to be very forward thinking, not only do they have a blog, but on their blog page they have a, video, news, poll, and media sections. You can also follow them on twitter, add them as a friend on Facebook, get connected on LinkIn, find them on Youtube, and look at pictures on Flickr.

Southwest\’s Blog

Strategies:
- Having a team writing for the blog
- Their ‘About’ page explaining to their customers their goal by having a blog
- Anyone can comment on their blog
- Having more than just a post section

Sun Microsystems Blog

For those who do not know what Sun Microsystems does you can check out their about section on their website.

Here are a few videos I found to be of interest:

The first half of the video has the senior director of global communications for Sun Microsystems explaining why Schwartz started to blog publicly. She explains how Schwartz felt that if people were passionate about their job they would comment and blog about it.

This video has Jonathan Schwartz talking about participation with networks. He call this the Participation Age, he talks about the importance of interactivity and content rich sites, with images and embedded video.

Jonathan Schwartz’s on his blog has this video that talks about what Sun as a company wants. He wants openness with his customers.

Video from Jonathan\’s Blog

Corporate Blogging Best Practices article has small case studies on corporations with blogs, and Sun Microsystems was said to have successful internal and external blogs. The article explained that their internal blog is used as an informational tool for the employees, researchers and developers. These blogs can be found publicly through an aggregation called Planet Sun. These blogs are not managed by the communications department and the employees are encourage to write about anything. The only policies are to not tell a secret, use common sense and if there is uncertainty, ask a manager. However, Suns most popular blog is ‘Jonathan’s Blog’ written by Jonathon Schwartz the CEO and president of Sun. Why his blog so well known? He was one of the first Fortune 500 companies to start a blog. He frequently posts openly about Sun as a company and their ideas, and discusses his view on the technology industry. He gets between around 50,000 visits or more a month and each post has many comments from shareholders. Schwartz started blogging in 2004 and wanted to use his blogs to reach out to his consumers, and believes if people are passionate about their company they will/ should blog, and share ideas. Jonathon Schwartz has an article in the Harvard Business Review called If You Want to Lead, Blog he talks about how CEOs or executives needing to blog. He gives points on how to to start a blog. Knowing a companies strategies and guidelines for a blog was a main point he stressed along with, openness, honesty, and authenticity. He also believes the biggest advantage to blogs is the ability to participate in communities that are relevant to the company.

Strategies:
Sun wants employees to be involved in the blogging process of connecting to its stakeholders and expressing their ideas

Sun does not have a strict policy on blogging and no communication department overseas what is written. Even though employees are encouraged to blog this also helps to not shy away from posting.

Having a CEO who actually is posting his own opinions and thoughts brings trust to a company and shows the public how involved and devoted they are to the company. Also they become more transparent to their consumers.

Sources:
Corporate Blogging Best Practices

Blogging:Bubble or Big Deal

Blogging: a new play in your marketing game plan

Emerald Article

GM’s Fastlane Blog

GM’s blog is call Fastlane, where there is one moderator that controls the blog. In the article titled A Study on Content and Management Style of Corporate Blogs the author talks about how since there are many employee’s, they each send what they want to post to the moderator, who then edits it before it is posted. This is called a centralized style the moderator decides if the post follows the companies policy of blog and then post it with the authors name. This style also helps keep a constant theme for the blog and makes the company more as a whole. GM’s blog has discussions with car buyers on issues, and products, using the blog is an efficient way to to build relationships with their stakeholders by eliminating the use of  traditional media. In Corporate Blogging Strategies of the Fortune 500 Companies it explained how GM has also started a smaller promotional blog more for a specialized group. This has not been as successful because there is low readership. Along with the fact there wasn’t a human voice and seen more as advertising. That is why the traditional blog with conversation has more feedback because the company is not trying to force their product on their consumers. So the success with GM is because they follow the criteria for a good blog by having a conversations with their constituents. I think that GM has a good start by having a blog where they value their consumers and discuss with them updates. However, I wonder if moderating the posts looks good.
GM Fastlane Blog

GM’s Stratagies:
One moderator to keep the blog unified.
Having conversations with their stakeholders
Not making the blog more of an advertisement

Macromedia’s Blog

For those who do not know what Macromedia is, they are a graphic and web development software house. They are responsible for Flash, and are now controlled by Adobe systems.

In an Emerald article it explains that Micromedia’s blogs are good examples of how a corporation uses a blog successfully. They were one of the first companies to start a corporate blog. They have knowledgeable bloggers who are encouraged, to post product information to help customers, and to personalize their blogs to me more “humanized.”

In the Wiley InterScience journal there is a study of 4 of Macromedia’s blogs. The blogs that were product specific and focused on Macromedia technology, quickly racked up comments. Customers like to give opinions, and Macromedia understands this because they post questions on how to better their Flash programs, and other ways to improve. On posts, found in the study, comments ranged from 107 to 430. This meant that the customers spent the time to read posts and leave comments because they felt valued by the company because bloggers were genuinely asking for ideas.
The researcher in the study mentioned that Macromedia had four types of interaction: socialization, information sharing, help seeking, and teaching and learning. All this interaction help the corporate blog. Bloggers along with being a helping hand to customers, would ask for opinions and feedback. Macromedia actually listened and implemented some of the ideas. Macromedia’s blogs are publicly open and actively updated.

Effective Strategies:

• Macromedia had focused posts that were easy for users to follow, which increased participation
• Macromedia acted on the information that was given to them, they would have weekly meetings where they would discuss comments on the blogs, and implement some.
  
• They trusted their followers opinions and built solid relationships
• They had multiple employee bloggers