Fortune 500 corporate blogging: Boeing, Chevron, Sun and Wal-Mart

FT ComMetrics Corporate Blogging Index ranks corporate blogs in trying to answer questions about your corporation’s blogging effectiveness.
But what about which blogs should be included in such a benchmarking exercise and which ones excluded. We tell you the criteria we use and how it works.

A company’s website is usually the first calling point for students getting ready to graduate and looking for jobs that they might want to apply for. Some companies may not really use their website for recruiting but, instead, try to improve branding or investor relations.

Whatever the blog tries to address, it certainly takes time and effort for successfully delivering the content your targeted audience is craving for. Most people talk about such things as:

– how to make the most of a corporate blog,

– which 50% of your marketing dollars are working?

But before we dive into all this important stuff, we have to agree what a corporate blog is and what it is not, as outlined below.

1 What is the difference between a business and a corporate blog?

Business blogs have been defined as those public blogs by company employees about the firm and its products and services (e.g., Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki). But such a definition is a bit too vague for our liking. We would like to use:

A corporate blog is a public blog by company employees about the firm’s products/services whereby copyright belongs to the company

Accordingly, employees running their own blog such as:

Rohit Bhargava ­ Vice President, Ogilvy PR , Jeremiah Owyang ­ Senior Strategist – Forrester Research

do not qualify as corporate blog using our definition. In both the above examples, neither does the firm have the copyright to the postings on these blogs, nor are the URLs/domains those used by the respective employers.

There are corporate blogs on domains different than those generally associated with the brand:

Oracle AppsLab or Mike Critelli, Executive Chairman, Pitney Bowes);

In both the above cases, the copyright is with the company, corporate logos are prominently shown and so forth.

Hence, copyright and corporate logos may be one indication that we are having a corporate blog in front of us.

2 What is the difference between a single event blog and ‘real’ blog?

Nevertheless, just because a blog is sponsored by a corporation does not make the blog a success either. While there is no ‘only way’ to blog, some employees exchange information and ideas with customers. And while one can design them more narrowly as well, a corporate blog covers more than one event, as illustrated with this blog.

Chevron Blog at World Petroleum Congress

The above blog was created for one conference, had numerous postings during the conference — and than it just died. There have been no postings on the above blog for months. One would expect that a corporate blog lives and continues to live. The Chevron example fails.

3 What is the difference between press releases versus a blog with corporate news?

The SEC has already agreed that news released on the corporate blog results in public disclosure

Nevertheless, this does not mean that a corporate blog works like a press release – or a blog is like one-way communication. An example how it should not be done is shown here:

Wal-Mart news – one way

In the above example, Wal-Mart publishes its news via the web and offers an RSS feed. But a blog lives by offering two-way communication. The company and its emploeeys publish interesting material while customers or suppliers can, if they wish, respond by leaving/writing a comment.

Of course, Wal-Mart does know how to do it right as this example shows:

Wal-Mart Checkout Blog

Next week we bring you three more criteria that one should use to determine if one has a corporate blog on one’s screen or a business blog instead.

What do you think? What classifies as a corporate blog and should employees be required to get permission before writing about what goes on at work?

Share your thoughts or work and blogging experiences in the comments below.

Please check out:
be the first to know – Twitter e-mail, etc.	rank your corporate blog against YOUR competition	social media – ropes to skip – c-level blogs – FAQ #4
Social media – Intel shows how e-proxy can be done effectively	brand versus reputation – Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Josef Ackermann and Pat Russo to the rescue	c – top corporate blogs – how to arrive at such list – asking for feedback from bloggers

Tagged as: benchmark, benchmarking software, FT ComMetrics Blog Index, FT ComMetrics Corporate Blog Index, ranking