Top ten corporate blogs

Below is a link to an article that claims to have found the ten best corporate blogs.

The criteria:

...Amid the coal pile that is the state of corporate blogging today, I did manage to find a few diamonds that don’t bore to tears with pronouncements, promotions and product announcements (the Killer P’s) ...

See The Ten Best Corporate Blogs in the World (Business 2 Community).

Corporate blogs: From fad to tool

Apparently, more than 11 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have corporate blogs.

According to Workforce Management, the period of "we’ve got to do this tool" has ended with corporate blogs going mainstream because companies are realizing this is a tool that has utility.

For a discussion of what 'utility' is in this sense and some of the downsides associated with managing corporate image through blogs, see Chief Blogging Officer Title Catching On With Corporations for more details.

Employees would rather blog in private

I came across this article on blogging, social networking sites and corporations over a week ago, but the holidays got in the way.

The main thrust is that employees like to discuss work matters through blogs and social networking sites, but not so keen on doing this through the company Intranet.

It is based on a new study that suggests that the phenomenon of social networking and collaboration does not yet have a natural extension behind the enterprise firewall.

This is because:

- employees may be reluctant to expend the time and effort in keeping up a blog or community profile when they would be prevented from accessing the information if they leave the company.

- knowledge workers that understand the value of social networking may be loath to use corporate social technologies, particularly when Internet-based services provide the same benefits without the loss of what they perceive to be their personal intellectual property.

I can see where the employees are coming from!

The article in question is called The Pitfalls, and Potential, of Corporate Social Networks and is by Elizabeth Bennett of Baseline.

Corporate blogs take off in UK

A recent survey suggests British businesses are beginning to make increased use of corporate blogging.

Details of the survey by Loudhouse research include:

• 50 per cent of UK companies now undertake some form of blogging

• 64 per cent of UK corporate blogs have been launched in the last 6 months

• 86 per cent of companies that have a blog credit it with generating more business opportunities for their company

• 66 per cent of managers in the survey have visited blogs in the last 12 months

• 80 per cent of blog users visit blogs during working hours

• 33 per cent of blog visitors will access a blog on a daily basis

For more details see Inferno releases results of blogging survey.

Businesses and blogging

I try and keep the focus of this blog on subjects related to work and how workers are increasingly using Web 2.0 in a creative and purposeful fashion (well, most of the time!).

However, once in a while, I come across stuff on corporate blogs that grabs my attention.

In this instance it is a paper called Blogs and businesses: Opportunities and headaches by Wallace Wood, Robert Behling and Susan Haugen.

The abstract says more than I could say in such a short space:

"Web logs, commonly called blogs were originally developed and used by individuals.

This paper focuses on blogs from the point of view of businesses.

Current professional literature on blogging was examined to determine how blogs are being used, who uses them, and what are their advantages/disadvantages.

A survey of full time working students in southern New England was conducted to collect primary data on the corporate use of blogs to compare with the result of the literature search."

A good straightforward introduction to corporate blogs (in this case external and internal blogs), which has many similarities to work blogs.