- The Ups, Downs, Ins, and Outs of corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 company. American Express tries aggregating content to gather conversation. Does this attract new clients and also help build the brand?
Before You Start a Corporate Blog, Tie Your Shoe Laces Properly
happy birthday Daimler – blog that rocks
During 2008, several financial institutions have opened small business networks on the Web. Today we focus on:
The owner of OPENforum.com describes the site as an education and networking resource. The site provides small business owners with practical, actionable information from business experts, celebrity business owners, and best-in-class bloggers and news outlets.
It is a project where AMEX through Federated has a blog area that aggregates interesting business content. The objective is to gather a conversation in a sponsored area by current clients who own a small business and those that might still become clients of AMEX’s products and services.
The ‘blog’ is essentially a way for AMEX to spread its brand by piggy bagging using blog content from various commissioned writers. Chris Brogan did a nice review shortly after the site opened:
2008-06-21 by Chris Brogan – American Express is open
In October 2008, American Express Company announced the launch of OPEN Forum’s Economy section, a new platform for small business owners. The site aims to give business owners a way to discuss how the current state of the economy affects their businesses. Looks as if the editor of this section – Anita Campbell and her team are one reason why the membership (5,400) and unique visitors (11,000) has nearly doubled since May 2008:
Look Who is Appearing on the American Express OPEN Forum
Advantages
1) For getting some benchmark data, I went to our web-based application and typed in the URL:
Google PageRank of 5 is reported and some more stuff (CHECK IT OUT YOURSELF – see above link).
2) Calling the forum OPEN is smart, since OPEN is AMEX’s small business brand.
Accordingly, even the uninitiated person can figure out that this information forum is for small businesses owners sponsored by a small business geared credit card.
3) Having these experts write about issues that are of interest to small business owners in the U.S. means they get news content that is of value to them.
4) Another nice thing is that you can get access to the content without having to subscribe first.
Disadvantages
a) There is quite a bit of content coming your way each week. To reduce the time needed to read it all you can look at particular content section of the site only:
Small Business Trends Contributors — follows trends in small business.
Unfortunately, the RSS option does not allow you to subscribe to a particular section of this site or one writer’s content only (e.g., Guy Kawasaki – The sole of a new machine – Zappos is a machine).
b) If we consider that some claim about 20 percent of blog readers use RSS feeds, why not offer people to subscribe to the content using e-mail
c) While the site covers issues of interest to small business owners, the latter are a very heterogeneous group of individuals wanting different kind of content depending upon the:
– size of the small business – self-employed individuals have different needs for relevant information than a business with 100 employees; and
– retail versus wholesale biz – online vs. brick store – finance or building industry and so forth.
Not everybody can serve this heterogeneous group like Guy Kawasaki with the post – The Art of Bootstrapping. Good that he blogs for this site
Mastering these points will be critical factors when it comes to the future success of this blog. As well, resolving these issues will remove the obstacles that could prevent the site from reaching the objectives that were set for it, such as:
– How do the blog and its valuable content affect the bottom line for the OPEN brand?
– Will having this blog make AMEX’s cash register ring more often than without?
Conclusion
I like this blog very much. Nevertheless, if many large businesses do similar things as American Express did with this blog, content needs to be tailored specifically to readers one wants to reach – potential and current customers of the OPEN – small business – card American Express offers. Here there might still be some room for improvement.
I hope that the owners of the site will further tailor content to serve small business owners in particular areas.
I do not think I will subscribe to this blog right now even though I run a small business. Its content is a bit broad for my liking.
Please share your feedback, ideas, and critique.
Thanks.
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