I have been doing some research into company blogs recently and thought this might be an interesting topic for a post as well. I started with the top 10 biggest global companies from Fortune magazine but some are not included in this list as they simply did not have a blog ( which is a real shame). You will see some smaller company blogs included as well. This is to mix it up a little and show what a company blogs could do for your business, if done well.
The only order I applied is that I distinguished between 1) Blogs I liked, 2) Blogs I was not sure about and 3) Blogs that need some work. Here they are:
Some of the blogs I like:
- A blog that comes across as quite personal. http://jnjbtw.com This is so important for the pharmaceutical sector. Well done Johnson and Johnson.
- Intel not only has one but many more. http://blogs.intel.com This best practice is a benchmark for everyone.
- A nice example with nice visuals as you would expect from Kodak http://1000words.kodak.com
- Simple but effective. It says all it needs to say about the social networking news site Digg.com http://about.digg.com/blog/company
- A smaller company but also very good. The HomeGoods blog gives you a warm trustworthy feeling. http://openhouse.homegoods.com (I am not good at decorating and average at house work but I like the personality of the blog)
Blogs I am not sure about:
- Microsoft has many different platforms on how to engage with its stakeholders buts where is the central place to go too? Shouldn’t it be here: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx Microsoft is doing a lot right but where is the big corporate blog? Have I missed it?
- The Shell blog is not bad but too cluttered in my opinion. http://royaldutchshellplc.com/wp-wall-guestbook But it has the same problem as Microsoft. Where is the big company wide blog?
- The Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com I would expect more. But this depends on the eye of the beholder if simplicity is most important or if this is all you need in a corporate blog. I was not sure either way.
- A very good idea from ING to have the URL INGBlogs.com http://www.ingblogs.com/mycupofcha but why not do this properly and use it better and bring the whole group here? And not just Asia/Pacific?
- Toyotas approach is strange. Newsroom and blog together? Not so sure about that: http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/our-point-of-view.aspx
- Good layout but would need more interactivity features. The GE Global Research blog. http://ge.geglobalresearch.com/blog
Blogs that need some work:
- WalMart: I could not find a proper blog but what are they doing here? No post since December? http://checkoutblog.com Not good.
- I could not find a proper blog for Chevron either. Only a old one here: http://www.chevron.com/wpc/blog Would you think it is time for a simple blog Chevron?
All in all is the overview not complete of course but what is clear is that corporate blogs still need a lot of work. But more importantly do they need committed individuals that take care of it and involve as many people as possible in order to get as many different viewpoints represented as they can. Then a corporate blog really becomes useful for its stakeholders in my opinion.
So come on companies across the globe, you can do better!
Picture Credit: CarbonNYC