A look at corporate blogging

Companies and corporations are realizing that more and more business is conducted on the web. With the advent of Web 2.0 and the abundance of blogs on the internet, it seems to be a good business practice to set up a corporate blog. Blogs can give a human face to a faceless corporation, can inform users about new products and developments and can increase advertising and the web-presence of a company on the web, leading to increased search engine hits and more web traffic. However, different companies approach blogs in very different ways.

Stephen’s Lighthouse

SirsiDynix is a big name in the library world. The average person probably has no idea how much this company affects how they might use their public library. SirsiDynix produces Integrated Library Systems (ILS), among other software products for libraries. You might be more familiar with an ILS as your library’s online book catalog.

Stephen’s Lighthouse is a blog written by SirsiDynix's Vice President of Innovation, Stephen Abram. This blog is linked from SirsiDynix's main page and is the only official corporate blog that Sirsi lists. Abram himself is a librarian, with over twenty five years in the library business. His blog is directed to librarians, sharing interesting links, article excerpts, and other pieces of information valued by librarians. These entries can vary anywhere from a few paragraphs to lengthy article passages.

What this blog does not do is act like an official mouthpiece of SirsiDynix. Abram doesn't talk mainly about Sirsi products or development. In fact his stated purpose is to "help the good ship Library World navigate to its vision of the future." So his blog ends up giving a more human face to the sometimes nebulous SirsiDynix Corporation. Instead of a faceless corporate publication, he provides a place where comments are welcome and discussion is key.

Visually, the blog is pleasing to the eye. It makes use of the movable type engine and resembles most other blogs created with the same software. The text is rather on the small side and gray on white is a bit tricky to read. It uses right hand navigation in a two-column format. The search function is a nice touch, as are the links to articles and other writings by Mr. Abram. However, the link to the RSS feed is way at the bottom of the navigation column. The lack of an icon or other way to indicate the feed made it easy for me to miss in my scanning of the column, it looks just like any other link.

Google blog

The Google blog seems to be what I would expect from a corporate blog. A number of individuals post to this blog, from different areas in the Google Corporation. Most posts revolve around some new Google service or product. Earlier entries in the blog included frivolous things like recipes; however, the most recent entries seem to be clearly focused on informing customers of new products and services.

The blog's stated purpose is to provide "insights from googlers into our products, technology and google culture." The relatively short entries seemed geared to the average google user, probably those who like and use advanced Google features. Although the owners of the blog say they "love feedback" they require you to send an email instead of opening up comments on individual posts. This makes the blog seem less open to discussion and feedback from Google users and more like a public relations tool.

Google makes use of blogger, their own blogging platform. The site uses a two-column format, with the navigation in the right-hand column. The color scheme is reminiscent of Google's logo, with the primary orange and blue used as headers and link colors. The site feed link is right at the top, so a user can make use of this feature quickly, without having to hunt for it. That is good because the lengthy right hand column not only links to archives and labels (which seem to be comparative with tags in other blogging sites), but provides a rather long list of other Google blogs. There is also another extensive list of what the bloggers are reading. This information is nice and well defined by headers, but it can be a bit too much.

A tale of two Amazons:
Amazon web services blog
The Official Amazon Associates blog

While doing a search for an Amazon.com corporate blog, I came across two very different blogs associated with Amazon.com. The "official" Amazon Associates blog is directed to members of the Amazon Affiliates program, those who provide links to Amazon products on their webpages to earn revenue. The Amazon web services blog is a much more technical blog, directed to programmers and developers interested in Amazon’s web services, which include things like online file storage.

Both of these blogs have very different purposes and styles. The Associates blog is similar to the Google blog, and is more what I expect a corporate blog to look like. It provides information on new services and products. Most entries seem to be written by "Sean, Associates Product Marketing Manager" although other members of the associate team may post as well. All entries are signed. However, no comments are enabled in this blog. A way to get around this lack of discussion is to "digg" a post and then comment on the digg.com site.

The Web Services Blog is directed less as a marketing tool and more as a place where developers and programmers can share information. The entries are much longer than the Affiliates blog, providing links, images and video on a variety of topics, not always related to Amazon.com products. The most recent entry asks users to help find Steve Fossett using Amazon mechanical turk. Unlike the Affiliates blog, the Web Services blog openly accepts comments, although they are moderated.

In visual appearance, both blogs are very different. The affiliates blog uses a two-column structure, with navigation along the right hand column. The color scheme is very clean and reminiscent of the one used on Amazon.com. It makes use of multiple RSS links, and other web 2.0 technologies like delicious and digg.com. The Web Services Blog uses a three-column structure, with navigation along the rightmost column and helpful links in the left one. It makes much more use of the column space to provide links than the Affiliates blog.

We’ve looked at four different blogs – two very different ones attached to the same corporation. Each blog gives a different impression about the company they represent. Stephen’s Lighthouse makes SirsiDynix seem more human and librarian-friendly. Google Blog portrays Google as hip and with it, informing users of new features. And the Amazon blogs approach their particular readers with an individual and direct approach.

Of all the four, the two I'm most likely to add to my bloglines profile are Stephen’s Lighthouse and Google Blog. Abram's blog seems to apply to my and my career. And I want to know about Google's next big thing, so it would make sense to add that to my profile. Both blogs have successfully added a new person to their readership and that is, after all, the point.