What is a blog?

A blog (short for web log) is a personal web site where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. It can be used as a personal diary, a collaborative space, a political space, a collection of links or memos to the world. New stuff shows up at the top and your readers can read what’s new and they can comment on your posts.

How can a blog be used?

Blogs are used by all types of people, they are used by journalists, they are used by politicians, they are used by CEOs, they can be used by anyone and there are several platforms out there which offer free blogging services (blogger.com, wordpress.org) or payed blogging services
(typepad.com).

What companies use corporate blogging?

In 10/05/06, 40 (8%) of the Fortune 500 companies were using blogs. Either external or internal, blogs are not new to the corporate world. Some well known companies which use blogging are AMD, Amazon, Cisco, eBay, HP, Intel, Dell, Ford, Motorola, Nike, Oracle, Texas Instruments, Xerox, Verizon, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft, Macromedia, Google, Disney, GM, Sun, etc.

They use it either externally (for customer support, PR) or internally for communication and collaboration.

What can corporate blogging be used for?

Corporate blogging can be used for Customer support, PR (media relations), Internal management, Recruitment, Knowledge Management. It can be used for communication between different departments, it can be used for communication between management and employees, it can be used for communication between HR and employees, it can be used as technical platform for developing ideas, collaboration, customer support. Many companies use email for customer support. But not all people are good at organizing emails. It might be hard to track down an entire discussion which extends on several emails. With blogging, you can see on a single web page the entire discussion. Several may jump into the discussion and
the solution may be found even faster.

So called risks?

Companies using corporate blogging expose themselves to their employees (when used internally) and to their customers (when used externally). This might be interpreted as a risk because it’s hard to control what an employee writes on the blog. That employee is the administrator of his own blog so he has the power to post anything he wants; he can write about his believes, his frustrations, his accomplishments, anything. So Starting to use corporate blogging might be seen as a risk because a company should start using it only if it’s prepared to handle the transparency brought by it. Otherwise it might become chaotic and hard to control. Though used wisely can improve a lot the collaboration and communication inside a company.

Resources

A very good book on blogs is Jeremy Wright’s Blog Marketing.
Also, you can see a nice article about corporate blogging here.
The Fortune 500 Business Blogging can be found here.