The Corporate Blog – Do You Need One Or More?

One of the most critical aspects of digital marketing in the corporate arena is creating a corporate blog strategy that accounts for the company, key brands, and key individuals/roles.  In many cases this will require a marketer to design and implement a multiple blog strategy.  These multiple blogs can include brand blogs, product blogs, and even individual leadership sites like a CEO blog.

With multiple blogs, however, comes higher levels of complication and management.  As we’ve stated before, you really want to get this right on a piece of paper before launching blogs.  The first step is to decide whether your company needs a single blog or a multiple blog strategy.  If a multiple blog strategy is the right choice, the strategy will need to define business goals and interaction overall and at the blog level.

Confused yet?

I will try to demystify by providing using a hypothetical electronics company that makes sound amplification products for bass guitars.  Then I’ll provide some guidance in creating your framework.

The Hypothetical Company

Clear Wave Audio is in the business of building musical instrument amplifiers for bass guitars.  The company has two primary lines.  The Blue Wave line is created for enthusiast musicians ranging from teenagers to adults.  It features sound and quality worthy of the Clear Wave name but is at a price point affordable to all.  The Black Wave line is targeted at professional musicians and is the flagship product that put company on the radar screen.  Black Wave amps are used by several prominent professional musicians and carries a price point beyond the reach of average consumers.

Clear Wave Audio’s CEO, George Schultz, is the founder of the company and is known in the industry for his personality and presence at trade shows and appearances with the company’s endorsement musicians.

Let Your Target Audiences and Business Needs Define The Numbers

To start this discussion, I’m going to layout a couple of options and then I’ll we’ll apply some criteria to make a decision.

Here are our blog options:

• Individual CEO blog and a corporate blog featuring categories for the two brands.
• A corporate blog featuring the two brands where the CEO is a featured author.
• Create individual blogs for the two brands and have a CEO blog.
• Create a corporate blog, two brand  blogs, and a CEO blog.
• Create individual blogs for the two brands.

One could make an argument for any of the options above or even add some additional twists.  Thus, I am going to suggest starting at your target audience and business goals for blogging in order to back into the right answer for your company.

Let’s start with the business justification.

It is important to have a business justification for a blog and to measure the blog based on a set of metrics defined by that business justification.  Some popular business justifications include improving brand awareness, increasing sales, and lowering customer service related cost.

If our primary goal at Clear Wave Audio were to lower the cost of customer service, we could settle on a single corporate blog that featured “how to”, “repair”, and “equipment care” articles in a specialized category.  The blog could still be generic enough to host general announcements and other information about the company and its product line.  However, if our main business goal was brand awareness and increasing sales, we would have to closely analyze our target audience and potential brand dilution in hosting a single blog for our two products.

In the case of Clear View Audio, one argument might be that the Blue Wave Line and its lower end products could deteriorate the Black Wave brand.  It could be determined that the Black Wave consumer is looking for content and articles specifically geared toward professional musician.  On the flip side, the shear profits in the company could be driven by the Blue Wave line and the shear fact that it from the same company that produces the Black Wave line could be of benefit.

My recommendation is that if there is brand association at the consumer level and you meet your business goals with both target audiences, use a single blog.  Where a company has acquired brands to gaine market share and the consumer isn’t fully aware of it, target a two blog approach.  An example of this would be where hockey equipment maker Bauer bought rival equipment maker Mission/Itech and markets the brands separately.

What About The CEO (or other “C” Roles)

Since CEO’s don’t have egos, they couldn’t possibly want their own blog, right?  All humor aside, individual blogs within the context of a company come down to a single deciding factor–the power of the individual’s brand.  If you look at Bill Gates, for example, his brand is as powerful, if not more powerful, than Microsoft’s.

How about Ray Ozzie?

Who is that you ask?  Ray is one of the top minds in the world in the software industry and became Bill Gate’s replacement as “Chief Software Architect” at the company.  Ray is awesome!  Still, his brand is nowhere near that of Microsoft and should probably be a guest author on one of many brand or corporate blogs the company has.  Then again, maybe the blog’s goal is to build his brand since most still don’t realize that Gates no longer works at the company on a day to day basis.

Another thing to consider about individual blogs is that a blog is a digital asset.  What happens when the person leaves the company?  There is a lot of re-branding to do that could potentially impact the blogs results in search engines and other factors.

A High Level Framework for Corporate Blog Strategies

The following is a quick framework you can use to jump start your blog strategy:

First, start off by all of the moving parts in your organization and desired business goals.  These steps include:

• Clearly stating the business justification for blogging at the corporate level.
• Defining individual goals at levels such as product, brand, and/or division.
• Delineating roles versus potential authors with individual brand power at the company or in the industry.

Next, apply your variables to a single blog strategy and do everything possible to make it work within the taxonomy of modern blogs which includes categories, tags, and featured authors.  If you cannot do so, go through the same exercise with a multiple blog strategy.  If you choose a multiple blog strategy, you might want to consider whether these blogs are “subdomained”, individual directories, or are separate domains.  Though geared toward WordPress installations, the following article can help you to better understand options related to domains and URLs.

Derick Schaefer is a social media consultant, blogger, and founder of Orangecast Social Media. Derick has consulted on a number of corporate blog strategy engagements including with his previous employer The Microsoft Corporation.

Tagged as: blog marketing, blog strategy, brand blogs, branding, CEO blog, corporate blog