Megaphones to the Internet and the World: The Role of Blogs in Corporate Communications

Abstract

Corporations can create blogging guidelines, implement Web log monitoring-and-analysis programs, and launch blogs to capitalize upon this new medium of communication. During the next five years, blogging will not render the traditional tools of communication obsolete nor will it usher in a new era of corporate communications; however, it will become a permanent, fully integrated, and vital part of the media landscape. Students, academics, and practitioners interested in corporate communications and new media may find this article useful.

Notes

¹ Gardner (2005), Kelleher (2007), and Medoff and Kaye (2005) provide excellent descriptions of blogging-related terms in their respective books.

²Tim O'Reilly is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of O'Reilly Media. He coined the term Web 2.0 in 2003 and popularized it in 2004 at the Web 2.0 Conference (Forrest, 2006; O'Reilly, 2007). The concept, which refers to the second generation of Web technologies, is very difficult to define.

³David Sifry is the founder and CEO of Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), a leading blogosphere searching and indexing company.

⁴There is actually a difference between viral and word-of-mouth marketing. According to Gardner (2005), “Viral marketing is a strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others. [Like a virus, it] creates the potential for exponential growth, depending on the message's influence on, and exposure to, its target audience” (p. 295). On the other hand, “word-of-mouth [marketing] is the person-to-person passing of information, especially recommendations, in an informal manner, rather than by mass media, advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing” (p. 295). Blogs have proven to be excellent vehicles for these two types of marketing.

⁵According to the public relations and affairs agency Burson-Marsteller (2007), “e-fluentials … have exponential influence shaping and driving public opinion [throughout] the Internet and … the offline world” (para. 1).

⁶Some corporations (e.g., Pfizer) have begun doing this on a limited basis.

⁷These are fee-based resources.

⁸These are free resources.

⁹Corporations should also consider launching internal blogs to encourage discussion and collaboration and to provide a training ground for blogging.

¹⁰Corporations should call upon their investor relations (IR) departments to make the analyst calls and presentations associated with their quarterly performance reports available as audio and video blogs (i.e., Podcasts and vlogs) via RSS feeds.

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Malik, A. (2003). Are you content with the content? Intellectual property implications of Weblog publishing. The John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law, 21, 439–509. Retrieved May 24, 2005, from LexisNexis database.