Ten Corporate Blogs Done Right

First, I will just list the ten corporate blogs that I found to be the most effective, unique, important, and well-managed.

1. Dell

2. Adobe

3. BBC

4. Southwest Airlines

5. Marriott International

6. General Motors

7. Accenture

8. Amazon Web Services

9. 37 Signals

10. Freshbooks

Now there are many things that I think make these companies, in particular, good bloggers. As you can probably guess, each company has their own unique ideas and techniques when it comes to blogging. However, there is a couple commonalities that all of these companies utilize in their corporate blogs. Each of these blogs are used announce corporate news through blogs as opposed to frequent press releases and press conferences. Each of these companies also are very frequent in posting updates on their blogs. For example, Dell will update its blog with new information, announcements, etc. anywhere between 1-3 times per day. (1)

Individually, these companies display some very important and cutting-edge blogging techniques. These techniques include:

• 37Signals and Freshbooks take advantage of blogs to post about ideas as opposed to news or products. They will share insights about business, designs, editorials, and other topics that give readers an idea of how the company goes about business. (2)
• GM and Accenture take the opportunity to not only discuss their news and products, but they devote many blogs posts to discussing issues and offering advice to its readers about general topics such as "Becoming Green." (3)
• Companies like Amazon Web Services use a entirely different voice in their blogs. As opposed to a professional, corporate big-wig posting proper business writings, Amazon's blogs utilize a very "fired-up" and "fan-boy" style of writing to present ideas, product information, and news. (4)
• BBC offers "behind-the-scenes" and "Editor's" blogs where additional information and even evaluation of news coverage can be found. Reserving certain information for blogs and offering intra-business evaluation and opinions stimulates readers with new and unique ideas. (5)
• Adobe chooses to host many employee blogs as opposed to a few large corporate blogs. In these employee blogs, the workers have posted information about products, reviews about Adobe products and competitor's products, and even tutorials describing how to do certain task or effectively use Adobe's products. (6)

Each of these companies takes a different approach to their blogs. But because of the unique and effective presentation techniques, variety of information posted, and the structure and voice of the blogs, these companies are seen as the pioneers of corporate blogs.

(1) http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/

(2) http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/08/15-companies-that-really-get-corporate-blogging/

(3) http://www.accenture.com/Global/Accenture_Blogs/

(4) http://aws.typepad.com/

(5) http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldupdate/2009/10/russia_china_future.html

(6) http://blogs.adobe.com/