Companies world-wide are finding that a business blog is an inexpensive and very effective way to engage, entertain, and communicate with customers and potential customers.  Organizations involved in every product and service, across every industry are using this accessible communication medium.

Business blogs are hot. And, why shouldn’t they be? They are easy to develop, easy to use, easy to manage, and exceptionally effective for communicating with customers (and even vendors and employees) about new products, new services, company goals, and on and on. They are even excellent for creating a relationship with your customers in a personal and interactive way.

Lay Down the Goals

Before beginning a business blog, it is imperative that business drivers first look at the overall goals they wish to achieve with a business blog. Decide them, share them, and communicate them clearly to keep all of the blog creators and writers focused and on track. Here are three common purposes for business blogs:

• Help make the company more visible
• Open a virtual door to show the public what happens behind the scenes
• To provide valuable insight into the industry, which will contribute to the greater good of the field

Six Notable Business Blogs

Business blogs are great because they are a highly effective way to communicate and change the company’s image. Here are six examples of this tool in action:

1. Kodak:

The blog, named “A Thousand Words” is a place where like-minded photography enthusiasts can get together to share personal photos and talk about Kodak’s products and services. The company itself peppers in information about new information, and employees at all levels post about features and other news.

2. Southwest Airlines

Called “Nuts about Southwest”, this site is used as a tool to get information out to the public. It is about their airplanes, airports, employees and customers. They encourage input through customer comments. They also use their blog to gain traffic on other pages within Southwest’s site. For example, a recent photo captioning contest created a buzz on the blog, with lots of cross linking to their contest-dedicated site.

3. Chrysler

Chrysler uses their blog as a marketing/PR tool. Posts are written by the company and are of article quality. The site feels well-planned and conservative, which seems appropriate for the brand. The posts include new commercials, employee volunteer activities, newly designed products, and future industry trends, to name a few.

4. Adobe

The Adobe blog is a great example of how a company blog can be used to explain a regrettable product decision to customers. In this post by Scott Byer, he explains how Adobe will not be releasing an anticipated version of software because its development transfer to Mac was found to be dysfunctional. This is what many users needed to hear, and while it created a lot of angry folks, many also appreciated the honesty. Comments on this post are interesting, and range from thankfulness for the direct and honest approach, to anger over the message.

5. Whole Foods Market

The high-end grocery chain Whole Foods Market has had to put a “temporary hold” on CEO’s John Mackey’s corporate blog. The day before the blog was put on hold; a public apology to stakeholders was made by Chairman, CEO, and co-founder John Mackey for “anonymously participating in online financial message boards.” There is a lot more to the story, including internal investigations, and a FTC complaint about a company merger, and the blog was used as a media outlet for the distribution of information.

6. Technorati

The changing of the ranks, as well as company layoffs, were recently detailed to the public when web indexer Technorati’s CEO Dave Sifry decided to “hand over the reigns” as the CEO of the company, and take the Chairman of the Board seat. Eight staff members were laid off as well, with a description of how difficult the decision was to lay of “valued team members.” That’s an honest business blog.

The 6 deadly sins of corporate blogs

These common mistakes can undo any positive impact made by the blog phenomenon. Be careful and plan it out before jumping on board.

1. Having no human touch
2. Feigning human touch
3. Blogging for the wrong reasons, the “look at me” factor
4. Using the blog as a press release only to announce things
5. Not allowing comments on posts
6. Irregular and rare postings

In a way, these are all related to the most common mistake businesses usually make with their blogs. Businesses commonly have trouble releasing that super-professional edge their websites, brochures, and other literature maintain. Blogs - even business blogs - are not brochures. A business blog is a place where businesses can openly treat customers like people.

If you start or run a business blog, do these things:

• Let a few other people write posts
• Post some funny pictures every now and then
• Talk about how “cool” your new [equipment, software, tool, service, whatever] is.

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