The example of Robert Scoble benefiting Microsoft by blogging is an example of a large corporation who have benefited through the use of blogging, other large companies who blog include McDonalds, Boeing, CitiGroup, Time-Warner, Disney, Motorola… the list goes on…

But not everyone is blogging. In the Fortune 500, most surveys put the number at 8-10% of the companies are blogging.

Here in Ireland, Damien Mulley says only 2 of the Deloitte Fast 50 for 2006/2007 have blogs.

The large companies who are blogging do so for a variety of reasons, two important reasons being to 1) humanise their company a la Microsoft/Scoble and to 2) get involved in the conversations about their industry or products.

Sun Microsystems Inc for example not only has it’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, blogging, but allows it’s employees to start a blog on the company website.

Schwartz claims that as a result of his blog, sales are closed faster, and he has this to say about the Sun employee blogs:

“The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticated the Sun brand more than a billion dollar ad campaign could have done.”

With stories like these, it is hard to understand why more businesses are not blogging. Particularly smaller businesses…with larger companies like Sun proving the concept, surely smaller businesses can feel relatively safe in getting their feet wet with blogging?

Start-ups and smaller businesses have an opportunity to benefit from the changing marketing environment - they are not already stuck with huge, costly, traditional advertising habits and may never need to develop such habits. Nor do they need (yet) have to have endless policy meetings and red tape to deal with to decide to blog, and as such it may be easier for them to begin to blog and to blog candidly.

Small companies should be reaping the benefits of creating a direct relationship with their consumers while potentially overcoming the huge cost that a traditional global marketing campaign would incur.

We at Aonach Consulting don’t think that blogging is suitable for absolutely everyone, but looking down the list of the Deloitte Fast 50 it is hard to believe that only 2 of the companies could benefit from blogging.

If you are interested in blogging and would like to explore the possibilities for your business, contact us and we can assess whether a blog would benefit your company and what kind of strategy you could implement.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.