3 Reasons Why your Company Should be Blogging

Corporate communications has always been about maintaining the company's reputation and, to a certain degree, shaping public opinion about the company. This reputation management aspect is enabled by technologies that surfaced a few years ago-- Web 2.0 technologies to be more specific.

One way companies who would like to manage its corporate communications and reputation management is by maintaining a company/corporate blog. I've outlined three good reasons why your company should start its own blog:

1. True Company/Customer exchange of ideas - you probably heard of "The Conversation" concept-- a very honest communication exchange between the company and its customers. This can happen in the corporate blog. You customers can post comments and get the word straight from your company's heads representatives, like Sun Microsystems' Jonathan Schwartz to set the record straight.
   
2. Fight your battles in your own turf - The company website is good in presenting the nice, shiny things about the company, but I think a corporate blog can deal with the bad news better.When a company is under a crisis, the corporate blog can be a safe have for issuing statements and addressing comments. When the comments are to profane, you can moderate them-- at least you can answer the criticisms in your terms.
   
3. "Official" information release in Overdrive- Traditional press releases are quite inadequate these days. Corporate blogs, and blogs in general, provide information that can easily be shared and remixed. You company's official statements and releases can be picked up by your loyal followers and pass it around social networks and other platforms.

One final note: Ideally, the company should be configured to handle corporate blogging to reap the benefits of the platform.So that means companies should treat the corporate blog as another channel, but a strategic presence for corporate communications and have the resources allocated for it.