By the time the recent financial collapse was in full swing, AIG, Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland, among others, represented such a large systemic risk to financial markets that their governments could not allow them to fail. History now has the alarming potential to repeat itself, since Google and Amazon loom so large within their respective markets that they represent a sizeable systemic risk to the dependability and reliability of the Internet. We provide some examples below.

Google helps you with advertising
Google is not only a leader in search services but also online advertising. These days it is trying to expand its reach by getting small companies to sign up for its services. On June 15, 2009 ComMetrics received a letter from Google enticing us to start using AdWords. Small businesses were given a voucher in the amount of about €80 – 120 and the registration fee was waived:

Google AdWords Campaign – download the slick brochure we got from Google

Hence, we went ahead, followed instructions provided by Google, came up with good keywords, a meaningful ad (see image above) and defined our geographical territory to improve our campaign’s effectiveness.

We also improved the landing page at My.ComMetrics, got a high score from Google for our keywords and the pay-per-click rate was fixed.  We thought everything would be fine even though some have raised concerns about Google AdWords, such as:

muppman ==> Magne Uppman Hvordan skal jeg tolke at denne AdWords-annonsen dukker opp på søk etter mitt navn? (How should I interpret the fact that a Google search of my name results in ads with and/or about my name?)

We tested our keywords using a computer in the geographical region we chose to have the ads targeted to by Google. However, Google either showed weird ones and failed to show our ad altogether or showed no ads at all.

As the screenshot to the right shows, we got little to no traffic as a result of our campaign with Google AdWords.

By contrast, giving conference presentations or publishing and regularly updating the FT ComMetrics Blog Index is getting us new subscribers aplenty.

This means that while the system works for Google, which earns nearly £10 million a day from ads alone, a small business such as ours cannot expect much, except possibly wasting our cash and time.

Read also:
Google Ads basics as discussed here as well
How Long Does It Take For A New Google Adwords Account To Become Active?

Google’s effort to digitize books
Besides experiencing Google’s dominance in online advertising and not being too happy with the results, as US copyright holders of books we also had a chance to learn about its efforts to digitize books that are out-of-print. As it stands, the proposed settlement between US publishers, authors and Google tries to allow authors and publishers to maximize revenues while ensuring the widest possible access of out-of-print books. At least in theory.

However, some critics argue that giving Google control over past (out-of-print) books will translate into control over future ones.

The current proposal is such that all non-US publishers’ out-of-print books would be automatically included in Google’s digital library holdings unless the copyright holders opted out. As such the US settlement would remove foreign authors’ and publishers’ rights as enshrined in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (a nineteenth century international copyright agreement).

A US court hearing is set to formalize the settlement in October. If it is approved, the US regulator will literally be permitting US copyright holders to form a cartel with Google. That certainly would NOT meet any standard of fairness and good governance, since the agreement WOULD:

1) discriminate against foreign copyright holders and authors,
2) violate property rights of authors and publishers in foreign lands as specified in the Berne Convention, AND
3) proper procedures would not be used, such as a copyright holder opting out of the settlement by default unless otherwise stated (see privacy policies that require opting in to allow vendor to send product information).

Google Class Action Settlement – Systemic Risk for Authors and Book Publishers – download 3 pages we got from US lawyers

Bottom line: Risk must be managed properly
The risk now presented by Google’s dominance must be managed properly. And if it’s dominance in the search market, cloud-computing services, online advertising and book-digitization are not examples of a systemic risk as far as the dependability of the Internet is concerned, what is?

The systemic risk that we failed to manage properly in the financial markets was at the heart of the factors that exacerbated, if not caused, the financial crisis. Systemic risk in the digital world refers specifically to the extent to which a service provider like Google could contribute to a general digital media and information crisis. The systemic risk represented by Google or Amazon must first be measured and then managed, unless we wish to repeat Wall Street’s mistakes: if we reach the point where we cannot afford to allow some players to fail, taxpayers will once again be footing a hefty bill. Good governance to the rescue!

Read also:
Will Twitter and Facebook save UBS?
Wall Street: Four lessons learned
Wall Street déjà vu
Amazon with its Kindle disaster

Now it’s your turn. How should we manage the systemic risk to the Internet and its services as exemplified by the ever-increasing market dominance of companies like Google? Suggestions please.

Previously in this series we published:
1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03)
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware (2009-07-08)
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right (2009-07-08)

Today we release the last two installments of these tips and lessons, the fifth of which can be read here:
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key

In this final post, the focus is on continuous improvement and exceeding good practice.

Lesson 18: No improvement without measurement
It is smart to benchmark but you should not begin until at least six months after the launch of the blog. For instance, we learned about changing our plugins the hard – and smart – way, as outlined in this post: WordPress plugins.

Improvements will only show over time and the first few months following the lessons we outlined in previous posts will bring more traffic. Nevertheless, mistakes happen and your team should learn from each one of them.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com – benchmarking your blog – improve your score - sign-up for FREE

Lesson 19: Benchmark smartly
Some people suggest that regular benchmarking against others provides encouragement – a sort of benevolent peer pressure. While this helps, one of the smartest ways to benchmark is to benchmark against yourself. All things being equal, how much improvement occurred in your blogging between Q1 and Q2 of 2009 will tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Answering this question will provide information that helps adjust and improve performance.

Comparing one’s blog against another similar blog (e.g., company of similar size, same country and industry) is an effective way to benchmark, gain insight and subsequently improve performance (see also social media – benchmarking the smart way – FAQ #2). We will start a new series on this topic next month: Benchmark smartly (first post in September 2009).

Lesson 20: Continuous improvement is key
Our work preparing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index (KISS the blog-bride) has taught us that successful corporate blogs try to continuously improve, which should be a great deal easier if you have addressed the issues covered by Lessons 3 and 4.

By its second year, a corporate blog should be posting regardless of vacations or holidays (see Lesson 14), and the authors should preferably have settled into their stride, yielding more interesting posts for the target-audience.

Improvements might also include new useful features or things that increase the blog’s user-friendliness. For instance, we decided to improve the content by getting professional editorial help – the result is before you: more concise and straight-talking posts …

P.S. – Don’t believe those that try to tell you that a corporate blog will help you make money quickly, since that is almost never the case for businesses (see why social media does not work this way). Nevertheless, remember that blogging is a very important channel for distributing information of value to stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers and investors.

Takeaways

Without measurement improvement is difficult – but make sure you pick smart benchmarks that yield actionable metrics.
Comparing against one’s own and similar blogs makes sense – compare apples to apples.
Improvement takes continuing and diligent efforts – don’t expect wonders in a month but budget at least a quarter and then check your trends.

I will keep it brief, love to dialogue more in the comments. What is your take? Please share.

Previously in this series we published:
1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03)

Today we release the next two installments of these tips and lessons, the fourth of which can be read here:
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

Corporate bloggers should follow these lessons to save on resources, money and improve blogging effectiveness. It actually takes little effort but the results are astonishing if you correct r completely avoid these mistakes.

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Lesson 12: Manage your permalinks as effectively as possible
Make the permanent link to the blog post as informative as possible.

For example, the title of the post at
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/05/20/56072/dutch-courage-commodities-trading-edition/
is Dutch Courage Commodities Trading Edition.

For several reasons, we suggest using something more like
http://blogs.ft.com/alphaville/article/David Redmond-vs-FSA/
instead.

Our rationale for choosing the above is:

1. Using blog.FT.com indicates that this blog is hosted as a blog on the Financial Times’ homepage,
2. The blog’s name is Alphaville,
3. The word ‘article’ in the URL indicates that this is not a webpage, but a blog post; and
4. Using Redmond-vs-FSA at the end of the blog post’s permalink provides search engines with additional information beyond the title of the post, specifically that the post addresses an issue about somebody or someplace called Redmond and the financial regulator FSA.

Just a little adjustment that makes it that much easier for users and, as importantly, search engines to make more sense out of post titles with the help of the link itself. In turn, more interested readers visiting. That simple.

P.S. – Yes, some WordPress plugins are needed to do this.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com – benchmark your blog – improve your score – sign up for FREE

Lesson 13: Using the right URLs
Besides being careful about the permalink structure (see above), linking pages and then changing the page structure on your blog can wreak havoc. For instance, pages detailing how to contact the company or its privacy policy are generally a permanent feature on your main blog page (in our case all pages are in the far right column).

With WordPress it is important to remember that its database assigns a number to any page, article or post. Hence, linking to a permanent page using a number for the blog post has some advantages.

The highlighted link to the right is shown as a nested link or sub-sub category to ‘10 – Rankings and trends’, which has the following link:
http://howto.commetrics.com/watch-the-direction/

Subsequent categories are FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which we abbreviated FTCBI, and then comes 2009 for the 2009 rankings:
http://howto.commetrics.com/watch-the-direction/ftcbi/2009/

We named the ComMetrics Footprint page ’standard’ and kept Google Blog Search to get the following deep link: http://howto.commetrics.com/watch-the-direction/ftcbi/2009/standard/google-blog-search/

However, if we change anything in our structure of how we list pages (e.g., shift Google Blog Search to be listed under ‘9 – Methodology’), the long URL no longer works.

Accordingly, since you might need to change the structure at a later date, using the ID number of the page as provided by WordPress decreases 404 error message occurrences.

If you go to the blog’s admin page –> pages –> choose any page –> click edit, the address bar will show a link like this:
http://howto.commetrics.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=780

Grab the number and one gets
http://howto.commetrics.com/?page_id=780

Using this method of hyperlinking avoids problems in cases where you rearrange the structure, as occurred during recent spring cleaning on HowTo.ComMetrics.com.

This type of deep link will always bring up the page, regardless of where it may live within the structure.

Okay, now it’s your turn. What techniques you have used to improve your blogging effectiveness? What was your most successful “let’s do this and move on” tactic? If you have come close to resolving these challenges smartly, what did you do? Which of the above four strategies is your favorite? Which one do you think is just baloney? It’s okay – be honest. We can take it. Thanks much.

P.S. – You may find our next set of ropes to skip of interest as well: 5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key (2009-08-12).

After publishing the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs, some readers came forward asking for some tips on how to improve one’s ranking and statistics.

Can we help? Definitely! We have developed some best practices, as outlined below in a series of posts.

Today we release the first two installments of these tips and lessons, the first of which can be read here:

1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)

The next set will be published July 8:
3) Lessons  8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Lesson 5: Describe the value-potential for your proposed target audience
Defining the type of blog one is after (Lesson 2),  target audience one is aiming for (Lesson 3), as well as the focus of two-thirds of the content on your blog (Lesson 4) are all crucial first steps.

Here the focus is on why anybody would want to read your blog, instead of going to the beach or getting another customer to sign on the dotted line.

Google may have a blog I need to read because it provides 80 percent of my webpage’s search traffic – if it changes something in its technology that will affect my blog’s traffic I need to know right away.

The issue is also whether one reads the blog for entertainment value (e.g., a blog about one’s favorite online game, gossip blog about sitcom TV show, etc.), professional purposes (e.g., keeping abreast of the latest developments in one’s industry) or some other reason. A corporate blog can probably serve either group. Nevertheless, the key question is how it will help you sell more product or build the corporation’s reputation, visibility, brand and trust. Jot down a few sentences and see if your thoughts make sense to other team members.

Lesson 6 – define which strategic objectives can be supported by the blog
Make clear whether the blog is supposed to support sales or help build greater visibility for the brand.

GM is trying to make sure that no unsubstantiated rumors make the news, which serves the sole purpose of defusing rumors and correcting misstated facts as quickly as possible.

GM’s ‘tell it straight’ blog was intended to make sure that the world, including customers, taxpayers and investors, got the facts about its business negotiations before filing for bankruptcy protection in the US. Its primary focus is helping the firm survive in one form or another by getting the company’s viewpoint across. Most people would agree it has succeeded.

Lesson 7: Define which actionable metrics will be applied based on rules 1-6

To see how well your blog measures with these actionable metrics register your blog here:

My.ComMetrics.com – benchmarking your blog – sign up for FREE

An example of actionable metrics is when getting information that triggers a decision or action, such as finding out that one train to Point B departs at 8:05 and the next at 9:05. Depending on which train is chosen, one must leave home at a certain time to get to the station in time. The information is the basis on which the user makes a decision and takes action based on that decision. In business, failing to meet sales figures this quarter may result in the company deciding to put its workforce on a shorter work week for next quarter.

Besides following the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle, for a blog this means one needs SMART (Specific, Manageable, Actionable, Relevant, Trending) metrics for web and blog analytics. Accordingly, unless a drop in unique visitors last month results in some action to counter this effect why use this metric (Unique visitors come in many guises)? In fact, less traffic on a blog could be worth more in the end – if it’s the right kind of traffic (e.g., people feeling okay to buy product).

These days we tend to have too many metrics that are not used to make choices or decisions that result in actions to remedy the problem (see also Social media – metrics to know and metrics to skip – FAQ #2). Instead, it is smarter to focus on a  few indicators that result in actions, depending on the data one gets. Examples are:

the ComMetrics Footprint (see 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index),
the ComMetrics Health Check, and
the ComMetrics Return on Connection.

Composite indicators have their weaknesses but they are widely used for various reasons including, but not limited to, simplifying complex issues.

Okay, now it’s your turn. What techniques you have used in improving blogging effectiveness? What was your most successful “let’s do this and move on” tactic? If you have come close to resolving these challenges smartly, what did you do? Which of the above four strategies is your favorite? Which one do you think is just baloney? It’s okay – be honest. We can take it. Thanks much.

P.S. – Of interest to you would be our next set of ropes to skip: 3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain or home you choose – beware (2009-07-08).

How do you rank compared to your competitors? This question is answered in part by the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 firms’ corporate blogs. It will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business as well as on its webpage on Thursday, May 14.

In the never-ending quest to get the biggest bag for your buck and move up the rankings to become part of the best-in-class, there are some mistakes that must be avoided at all costs.

The Good
We discovered the good while developing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, meaning that corporate blogs are improving rapidly and many positive changes have occurred within the last few months. Most companies have done a lot of exciting work on improving their blogs, fostering communication and targeting their primary audience effectively.

The Bad
Building a large footprint remains a challenge. But most surprising is when companies make it very difficult for potential readers to find a blog. For example, finding anything about their blog on the Volvo bus webpage is difficult. If you’re lucky, you might come across a special page that shows a link to the blog. This seems a bit unnecessary.

On top of all this, the blog’s URL is complicated and has nothing to do with the corporate domain. This affects various statistical indicators that depend on the URL used, such as using the most obvious link results in these search results from Yahoo InLinks. Using a slightly different link shows more Yahoo! InLinks and so forth. No obvious links to a corporate blog can also affect its rankings in the search results as shown here.

The findings show that a simple, straight-forward link to reach the blog’s main page, such as blog.company.com, is a wise strategy.

The Ugly
A most unfortunate situation is when, for no apparent reason, a blog shifts its home on the Internet. One example is the Toyota Open Road Blog, whose new home is now on the Toyota website. Unfortunately, this meant its URL changed (see old blog posts in the Internet archive), making it harder to find for those using old directions.

While the blog previously had a large footprint, changing its URL meant it lost a lot of links and its footprint shrank significantly. Google PageRank, Technorati Ranking, Technorati Authority, Yahoo! InLinks and Google Blog Search as well as ComMetrics Footprint rankings have tumbled due to the blog’s changing URL.

Moving up in the rankings after falling into a crevice can be a near-impossible climb. Hence, by wisely choosing one’s blog URL in the beginning to avoid changing it will save you a lot of grief and money.

Bottom line
Following the KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid - principle, blog URLs should be made simple for robots and humans to find your blog estate without having to jump through hoops.  And changing a blog’s URL after attaining impressive rankings is neither effective nor does it help save resources in these tough economic times. In fact, it will take much effort and resources to climb up the charts after the inevitable fall.

A smart example is eBay and its Skype brand. All blogs are hosted under share.skype.com/, which gets a Google PageRank of 7. All blogs are located on
share.skype.com/sites/, which has a Google PageRank of 6. The latter is the rank Google gives all Skype blogs, including share.skype.com/sites/en/, share.skype.com/sites/de/ and share.skype.com/sites/jp/.

Differences start with Technorati Authority, Technorati Ranking and Yahoo! InLinks, where the English blog seems to do slightly better. This happens with other firms as well, such as Nokia, whose English blogs do far better (see the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index) than those in other languages (an issue to be addressed at another time).

Our question to readers is, what is your opinion? Please share your thoughts and insights on this important issue by leaving a comment. Thank you.

Find out more about the  FT ComMetrics Blog Index using these links: Leaders by metric, What is top class, Methodology, Good and best practice, Lessons learned, Trends to watch, Your own index report, Free download: PDF report

Destroying brand value is not difficult: all it takes is relentlessly disappointing expectations. Kleenex, Fortis, L’Oréal, Motorola and BAE have all chosen to pass up the opportunity offered by blogging to secure themselves a new lease on life during this recession. In fact, these brands have decided to shut down blogs that had substantial numbers of followers.

In this post we share some of the things we discovered while working on the FT ComMetrics Blog Index. The latter will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular Digital Business supplement and its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Thursday, May 14.

Does it matter?
The lessons or ropes to skip listed below are not in any particular order of importance. Some of them may be familiar and others may be new to readers. Regardless, they all are important and avoiding these mistakes will minimize your company’s waste of valuable resources while at the same time improving your blogging effectiveness.

Lesson 1 – building a relationship and having a conversation takes time. Of course, we all know this. Nonetheless, L’Oréal’s Vichy brand tried to do this in just four weeks; thereafter the blog was basically shut down.

Unfortunately, blogging effectively requires that one stick to one’s guns for at least 12 months. Plus, regularly posting content that is of interest to one’s target audience is key.

Lesson 2 – it is not just about selling. On the flip side of Vichy, Kleenex launched a blog site as part of the advertising campaign for one of its products, but after a few months the blog was taken offline.

The Kleenex example illustrates that using a corporate blog just to push a product may fail to secure customer trust and confidence in the brand. In fact, it may hurt your brand more than doing nothing at all.

Lesson 3 – a corporate blog should be linked to a topic, issue or group of people. Some companies allow an employee to blog about a particular topic. Unfortunately, this can result in a blog’s sudden death once this person leaves the organisation, as illustrated by the BAE Systems Graduate blogs.

There are two ways to reduce this risk. First, several people could provide content for a blog about a specific topic, such as career management. Second, a category about career management could be made part of a blog with several employees posting content in it as illustrated by the Beruf und Karriere category on Daimler’s blog.

Lesson 4 – lean times demand that this medium be used effectively. So a company followed the above steps, and painstakingly managed to create trust with clients who read the blog and participate in the conversation. Despite that previous effort, while putting together the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, our crawlers discovered more than one blog that had been taken offline, such as Motorola’s effort. Fortis also made a misstep: they used to run a great blog for start-ups and entrepreneurs (http://www.join2grow.biz/Magazine.aspx) with a dedicated following, but just as the sale of Fortis Bank to BNP Paribas was imminent, the blog was taken offline. Neither the old or new ‘owners’ felt the need to explain this action to the blog’s loyal followers and readers.

So maybe the product no longer exists or corporate strategy changed. But why throw the baby out with the bathwater and take a successful blog offline? What about all those dedicated readers of the RSS feed and/or subscribers for the blog’s new posts via e-mail? Why lose them? Could the blog be kept alive while still resonating with consumers or clients?

Bottom line
During an economic downturn, more emphasis should be given to effective communications media, including blogs.

We suggest following these four lessons and providing content that readers consider valuable. In contrast to an advertising campaign that will eventually stop, a blog can change slightly over time but is an effective way to help your brand and provide target customers with content they find useful.

Putting the consumer first is surely important, but expecting everything after that to just fall into place is plain naive. And making mistakes as those discussed above will make things unnecessarily difficult for your brand. Those who aspire to build and maintain global awareness would do well to bear in mind that the success of global powerhouse brands is based in large part on making effective use of social media. Dedicated readers of corporate blogs are not only a resource of knowledge but also of inspiration that should be treated with respect. Failing to do so may cause unnecessary damage to your brand.

What is your take on other brands’ blogging performance? Are there others like Kleenex, Fortis, Motorola and Vichy who got it wrong or more who got it right? Please share your thoughts and insights on this important issue by leaving a comment. Thank you.

The current economic crisis has made it tougher for businesses to protect jobs and experience revenue growth. To help improve visibility and your brand, some suggest creating a Press Kit (aka media kit). Theoretically, this will help provide media with ‘powerful and actionable information about your business’, but more often than not it is another case of failure to communicate effectively.

There are five questions that you need to answer carefully for your business if you hope to make your mark when working with the media:

1) Do you have something interesting to say? Unless you have something to tell a journalist that he or she is just dying to write about, don’t hold your breath; your media kit is unlikely to get you a featured article. Seriously, why do you think any journalist will want to write about you?

2) Why print a media kit when a virtual one will do? You don’t need a glossy and costly press kit these days, a virtual press kit will save you some money and do just as well. We got some help from a designer for the brochure we produced both a printed and a digital version of. The digital version has been downloaded many more times than we have handed out a printed one.

3) Why have a press release when nobody is interested?  If we have something interesting to say, we use a personal e-mail message and attach a pdf file to reach our media contacts. But even using a personalized e-mail message may get you little, if any, response or attention. A hundred mail-outs may get one or two journalists to respond, if that (also see point 5 below).

4) Are you expert enough to give a speech at a conference? If the conference is attended by your potential clients and relevant media outlets, it can get you an interview during or after the conference faster than you might think possible.

5) Why should you keep in touch with the few journalists you know? It is all about social networks these days and knowing or having helped a journalist in the past can do wonders. Why not refresh your acquaintance by visiting them at the office for a coffee-break next time you are in town? (Refer to point 3 above: if you are lucky, the next time you send a press release they will at least respond.)

What is needed for effective public relations?
Having said all that, associating oneself with a well-known brand seems to work for us. For our product, the Financial Times seemed the best choice, so we created a product for them that they also wanted to publish. In turn, this allowed us to co-brand ourselves. One inexpensive but effective way was to use an e-mail signature like the one below:
==>
Welcome to the home of the FT ComMetrics Blog Index that ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 — corporate blogs
Relevant blog metrics for diary, personal and business blogs
Please subscribe now so you can claim your personal and/or corporate blog AND trace those that you want to compare yourself to.
For Twitter, please use #hashtag ➡ #FTCBI
==>
And yes, besides many clicks and inquiries from e-mail recipients, the above has produced:

a) interest from journalists wanting to know more about the index, and, most importantly,
b) enquiries from potential clients, of which some signed up right after talking to us. (My.ComMetrics.com is offering a free sign-up to track your blogs during alpha testing – get a first peek at the FT ComMetrics blog index by logging in at FTindex.ComMetrics.com.)

But how much media attention and viral buzz this will create remains to be seen. Ultimately, all that counts is getting those interested users to sign up and pay for our services.

Bottom line
In our experience, glossy press kits are more likely to make potential investors feel you’ve wasted resources rather than spent them wisely, even if some people try to make you believe otherwise.

Plus, small businesses have to work extremely hard to get attention from traditional media or bloggers. They simply lack the brand recognition of bigger companies like Coca-Cola, that will get journalists to sit up and take notice.

Follow our five pointers and fake all the media attention you can get but don’t waste too much time getting it.

Our question to readers is, do you feel that your media kit has made a real difference to your bottom line, have you used other means to get your message across? Please share your thoughts and insights on this important issue by leaving a comment. Thank you.

By now you probably know that diligent work is being done to get the numbers ready to publish the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs.

The 2009 index will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business as well as on its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Wednesday, May 13.

We have described different facets of this project in previous posts:
Five steps to turn buzz into sales
How we found and selected the blogs included on the FT ComMetrics Blog Index
Financial Times: Is blogging good value?

I thought you might benefit from some of my background research on this topic. And I’d appreciate your help in curating this list by providing more details and submitting additional cases.

>> Last update: 12 March 2009
>> Total # of corporate blogs from FT Global 500 companies: 73 (part of a larger and expanding database).

The following examples of companies using social media marketing with the help of blogs are listed in alphabetical order:

Actual FT ComMetrics Blog Index from FT Global 500

1. ABB
2. Accenture
3. Adobe
4. Alcoa
5. Amazon
6. American Express
7. Arcelor Mittal
8. Aviva plc
9. Bank of America
10. Bayer
11. Berkshire Hathaway
12. BNP Paribas – Fortis
13. Boeing Corporation
14. Chevron
15. Cisco
16. Coca-Cola Company
17. Daimler
18. Dell Inc.
19. Deutsche Telekom
20. e-Bay
21. E.ON
22. EMC Corp
23. Emerson Electric
24. Ericsson AB
25. Fedex
26. Fiat
27. France Telecom
28. General Electric
29. GlaxoSmithKline
30. Google Inc.
31. Henkel
32. Hewlett Packard
33. IBM
34. InBev
35. ING
36. Johnson & Johnson
37. Johnson Controls
38. Kimberley-Clark
39. Kraft Foods
40. McDonald’s
41. Microsoft
42. Motorola
43. Nestle
44. News Corporation
45. Nike
46. Nissan
47. Nokia
48. Novo Nordisk
49. Oracle
50. Petro Canada
51. Procter & Gamble
52. Renault
53. Reuters
54. Royal Bank of Canada
55. Royal/Dutch Shell
56. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
57. SAP
58. Siemens
59. Sony Corporation
60. Swisscom
61. Sygenta
62. Telenor ASA
63. Telia Sonera AB
64. Telstra
65. Time-Warner Inc
66. Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.
67. Unilever
68. Verizon Communications
69. Viacom
70. Volvo AB
71. Wal-Mart
72. Wells Fargo & Company
73. Yahoo!

::::  If your blog is not on this list (even if your company already has another blog on this list), enter its URL as a comment below. For every company listed, we select the best-performing blog and include it on the index. Some companies (e.g., Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Nestlé, Siemens, Volvo) have more than two blogs in our database but only the best one is included in this list, so you may be aware of a blog that we don’t know about. By entering the URL below you can help the company move up in these rankings by providing us with a blog that might perform better than the one we have used here. So please share and contribute below.

Notice anything missing? Whether a Fortune 500 or FT Global 500 blog, leave a link and description in the comments below. The main list will continue to expand to ensure inclusion of all qualifying corporate blogs.

Saving is back in vogue as western economies struggle to recover and banks’ biggest challenge right now is trying to persuade terrified customers to once again put their trust in the financial system and its institutions. Can financial institutions such as Scotiabank succeed by using social media and online communities more effectively? Read on and judge for yourself.

Recently I have addressed corporate blogging issues such as:

FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs – case study – HSBC
Volvo, China Mobile, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, ABB, Swisscom and more: case studies about corporate blogs
Before you start a corporate blog, tie your shoe laces properly
Happy birthday Daimler: a blog that rocks
Case study: Beck’s beer – does humor translate?

Innovation can give companies dominance within their environment. For instance, Josiah Wedgwood was a formidable technological innovator in his time. However, his recent successors famously struggled to automate the simple attachment of a handle to a teacup. They lacked his ruthlessness, moving too slowly to shift production offshore in an effort to save UK and Irish jobs. Woolworth’s was another dinosaur. Customers had forgotten quite why they were supposed to visit a store that once sold everything for sixpence but ended up selling nothing at a range of prices.

The above indicates that adverse macroeconomic conditions reduce the survival chances of businesses. The weakest succumb first. Waterford Wedgewood had not made a decent profit for years and it was already in poor shape when driven into administration this month. During such times, social media appears to some financial institutions as the way to build a better mouse trap, while making sure that the customer has a connection that goes way beyond ‘engagement’.

However, do customers understand why they should visit Beck’s beer’s blog site or why they should join a financial institution’s online community for entrepreneurs, such as the one offered by HSBC?

Beck’s and HSBC indicate that large corporations and their brands are struggling to convince customers that they are different. Moreover, convincing customers or potential clients to join these brands’ online events or social communities is a real challenge. Another example is Canada’s Scotiabank, which tries to reach entrepreneurs and small business owners with:

MyVault – money meets life – personal and business

This is a dashboard-style application that one must register as a member to use. Thereafter you can gather feeds, news, and communicate with MyVault community members via forums.

Evaluation
Used correctly, communities like MyVault can impact the top and bottom line of a company’s financials. In theory, MyVault encourages customers to self-support each other (reducing costs for Scotiabank), as well as spreading the word to each other (efficient marketing and increased sales).

In practice, does MyVault – money meets life – personal and business achieve the above goals? To begin with, it has to convince targeted users that spending time on and participating in this community is worthwhile.  Maybe if you are a customer it does, but it seems to be something of a chicken-and-egg issue. Unless you start with nuggets that attract people to join, the community is unlikely to be large enough to generate the value content needed to sustain itself and even less likely to grow.

This example shows that succeeding in offering value for time in the age of distraction matters if you want a following during these recessionary times. Unfortunately, MyVault illustrates that not everyone can be a leading innovator who blazes a new trail. I am not sure what the objective for this online community is, but it seems to fail in providing the nuggets and value content that could attract small business owners. This could result in a slow and painful death for MyVault. Worst is that a social community that is half dead does not instill trust in the Scotiabank brand and may instead result in the community succumbing to another round of budget cuts at the bank.

Bottom line
A cold-blooded analysis of the performance of most of financial institutions’ online communities shows that few have delivered big, or even decent, returns. Even fewer of these online ventures have helped establish a deeper sense of connection that goes beyond a lackluster customer ‘engagement’.

The Royal Bank of Canada set itself the goal of reaching students by having their peers write about issues that matter to Canada’s post-secondary population. After just a little less than a year it seems that the blog has succeeded. MyVault aims far higher. While holding on to customers is proving hard, keeping MyVault subscribers presents a tough task considering the community’s content.

The way survival of the fittest works in the branded online community business is as chaotic as the operation of Darwinism in nature, however. Yes, financial institutions’ social media strategy – an increasing trend in that industry – has to be aligned and pursued with vigor whilst striving for value to attract users. Nevertheless, we can only hope that bankers will get over their temporary lurch into social media infantilism. How about remembering that hitting the phones and talking to customers is generally a better way to generate business and keep current clients satisfied than using a Twitterfeed or keeping a boring online community alive such as MyVault or HSBC.

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Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. What is your take? Have you come across a financial institution’s online community that really made a difference to your business or non-profit organization?
Please provide your thoughts and insights! Other readers would surely love to read them. Thanks.
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In the meantime, register your blog at My.ComMetrics.com for free and track your performance to see how you measure up to your competitors.

The ups and downs, ins and outs of corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 corporation prove that just following the example of others and embarking on a social media experiment will not save the day. This case demonstrates that when the going gets tough, the tough take action or failure is just around the corner.

The previously published case studies listed below help to illustrate social media practices, both good and bad.

Volvo, China Mobile, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, ABB, Swisscom and more: case studies about corporate blogs

Before you start a corporate blog, tie your shoe laces properly

Happy birthday Daimler: a blog that rocks

Case study: Beck’s beer – does humor translate?

In the past we discussed different approaches by FT Global 500 corporations in managing social media campaigns and blogs in particular. For instance, American Express chose to pay journalists to write specifically for its branded platform Open Forum while the Royal Bank of Canada pays students to blog for students.

Beck’s beer chose a British comedian to bring its message to 18- to 25-year-old males in the US. Today we focus on the HSBC Business Specialist’s Blog within The HSBC Business Network.

HSBC’s Business Network aims to help expand start-ups’ networks, as well as offer them the expertise and support of the bank’s business specialists across the UK. Supposedly the community’s purpose was, and still is, to guide new businesses through writing a business plan, researching the market, developing sales strategies and marketing plans (including on the web), mastering tax and employment law as well as franchising.

So how is HSBC’s social community doing on the Web in general and on its HSBC Business Specialist’s Blog in particular? I went ahead and began assessing this venture by using the four criteria that characterize an organizational blog. Based on these, HSBC clearly qualifies.

Unfortunately, data assessed according to the vibrancy indicator demonstrate a distinct lack (e.g., last post more than 15 weeks ago). I also went ahead and used the conversation or broadcast index and found only a few comments by readers.

Finally, to get full access to the blog or the community you must register yourself. This is unfortunate since it seems completely unnecessary. In fact, if the content and services provided by the platform are convincing, HSBC’s small business owners – the platform’s primary target group – will subscribe to receive content and other material via e-mail and so forth.

Evaluation
The content of HSBC Business Specialist’s Blog comes from UK branches’ small business experts offering their opinions on various topical issues. Since September, however, nothing new has been posted and the last three posts are dated June 20, August 21 and September 4.

This is a common characteristic throughout the site. HSBC hired LiveWorld to develop and implement this community in partnership with communications agency Mindshare. While these experts have managed to get a few people (HSBC customers that is) to start their own blogs on this platform, regular posting of valuable material seems to be the exception and not the norm.

To get people to continue engaging and regularly contribute to the virtual community, however, subscribers need to believe that the end result is worth the effort. Accordingly, unless valuable content is posted regularly, people are unlikely to be convinced that it is worth their time to contribute and participate in this virtual community.

For a final quantitative check I used our tools on My.ComMetrics.com. Google PageRank gives the site a three; while this is not bad, the site has been stagnant at this level since it was launched earlier this year – maybe another indicator that things are not going that well.

Bottom line
Launching a community for your target customers is one thing, but coming up short in terms of impact is another. If you do something, do it right and consult with the experts, in this case social media gurus. The HSBC case provides us with the following lessons from the digital frontier for ensuring reader involvement.

1. Assure regular (i.e. at least every two weeks) posting to the blog of relevant and new content for your target audience (in this case, small businesses); and,

2. Make sure that people actively engage with the blog (i.e. invite them to participate and provide feedback by leaving comments on each blog post).

Beyond the above, creating an online community that benefits from participants’ more active engagement may also necessitate support in the form of:

1. possibly organizing offline events that bring online members together (i.e. facilitating and enhancing networking); and,

2. special offers that help members with their business (i.e. giving members-only access to various things like implementation checklists [for example, five ropes to skip when preparing your loan application or ten things you must check to implement your marketing plan smartly] and so forth).

Hence, HSBC’s virtual platform for small business has not proven to have an enduring appeal for the bank’s target audience (small business clients in the UK); however, not all is lost. By taking the above steps, the bank can demonstrate that it has still got a winning touch in social media.

HSBC must clearly demonstrate to its target audience that engaging with its platform helps small business owners improve their bottom line. Without the changes suggested above, however, involvement by its target customers will continue to be lackluster.

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Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. Add your comment to this post. What is your experience; are you using this or similar communities; do they help your business’ bottom line? Please provide your thoughts and insights! Thanks.
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Why not follow me on Twitter.
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MyComMetrics Twitterfeed for http://My.ComMetrics.com = benchmarking your blog or Twitterfeed – count what matters – change what counts #tools2watch

The Ups, Downs, Ins, and Outs of corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 -  at least as far as size is concerned .
Beck’s (an InBev brand besides Stella Artois and Budweiser) provides a good example for how not to do it – ropes to skip - the entire blog site is in Flash – making navigation a headache
This post explains why beer lovers will not want to re-visit this blog – read and learn.

Volvo, China Mobile, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, ABB, Swisscom and more – case studies about corporate blogs

Before You Start a Corporate Blog, Tie Your Shoe Laces Properly

happy birthday Daimler – blog that rocks

Earlier this week we reviewed a great blog with a new approach (getting students to write for students – novel approach it ain’t but surely novel for a bank – check it out):

FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs – case study – Royal Bank of Canada

The above blog will be included in the FT ComMetrics Global 500 Blog Index. So will the one we are discussing today. It is:

Beck’s beer – a blog that violates a few social media best practice guidelines

Beck’s brand is owned by InBev, the Belgian brewer who also owns such brands as: Stella Artois and Budweiser.

We and other social media folks were told that Beck’s marketing agency and staff interviewed more than 1,000 indivdiduals. After all this work they decided on the British standup comedian Darius Davies to serve as the voice of the brand.

I went to My.ComMetrics.com to check how things would look. They look great as far as Google PageRank is concerned – 6. I am quite surprised how this site could have such a high rank. If you dig deeper with our tool, few if any links exist to the site.

The comedian Daruis is supposed to be capable to bring truly engaging content to this blog venture. The content is supposed to be relevant and of interest to the beer’s target audience.

Unfortunately, some social media people have taken issue with this new blog. For instance, the tone of the blogger is bit hard to take. Neither do I know nor can I be sure that the type of content the Darius comedian is serving on this blog is really of interest to beer lovers.

The blog was launched during December 2008.

Unfortunately the entire blog site is in Flash. This is not a very user-friendly platform to create a blog that requires some navigation.

You cannot use your mouse to go through some text nor can you right click or navigate back easily.

Neither can you link back to some image or text. You would have to use Print Screen to use the image and than just link to Becks.com – not really the way you want to do it.

As well it is not really possible to link to a post, image or a particular area of the site because for anybody go gain access you must jump through the age verification hoop and the browser works poorly with Firefox or Opera.

I find that coming up with a reason to return to this blog is difficult for me.

Luckily the RSS feed remains a simple point and click and does not require Flash . But even here, if you want to read everything, you have to click on the headline. If you use Firefox …. and the Flash horror starts all over again.

Hence, not even low tech RSS will completely shield you from the horrors of this site. But you can have a look here how the RSS feed will give you trouble if you intend to click on a headline/title:

RSS feed

Incidentally, if you search for Beck’s beer blog on Google you will not find the corporate blog coming up first it is a long way down – not very good:

Beck’s beer blog

Several sites have already commented on this disaster, here is one example:

another joke plaid on Beck’s – Saturday Night Life

Bottom Line

My colleague @KingNils said it much better (see to the left) when he did RT my tweet. Freely translated:

“It is so bad you can tear your hair out and why did they not ask for advice from us.”

An exercise that costs tons of money and will ultimately not deliver the bottom line results Beck’s and its parent InBev hoped for.

I keep watching how this case will develop during the next few months. I expect some drastic changes. Let us hope it is not too late. A lot of damage to the brand has already been done.

The Ups, Downs, Ins, and Outs of corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 -  at least as far as size is concerned . Another example how one can do it smartly but has to use creative ways to make it work.

Volvo, China Mobile, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, ABB, Swisscom and more – case studies about corporate blogs

Before You Start a Corporate Blog, Tie Your Shoe Laces Properly

happy birthday Daimler – blog that rocks

In the past we have discussed different approaches used by FT Global 500 corporations in managing social media and blogging in particular. For instance, Daimler has its employees blog away with gusto, while American Express chose to pay journalists to write specifically for its branded platform called Open Forum

Here we discuss the case of the Royal Bank of Canada – that has chosen 6 students and one employee to write about their lives and things of interest.

PS. While the Royal Bank of Canada struggles with today’s financial markets and has to raise another 2 billion dollars to bolster its capital structure, things look far rosier at the social media front as the case study below illustrates.

selecting the team

Of interest is that the Royal Bank of Canada had a competition to select the bloggers for this venture. The competition was open to students all across Canada. The bank selected six students to write content for the blog for one year. I do not know if these students will continue to contribute after this period or new ones will be selected.

The blog was launched during January 2008.

what this blog does very well

There are quite a few lessons we can take from this blog. To begin with, it is clearly targeting itself to people who are between 17 to 25 years old. It focuses on a target audience that consists of students that require student loans and banking services. However, financial matters are not at the core of this blog’s content with some exceptions. For instance, when a post describes why the arrival of the bank on the UCB campus in Vancouver was so a good thing, I am not sure how many will be interested besides those attending UBC, of course .

Besides having a clearly identified target audience, the blog carries posts that are of interest to its target group. Topics may range from,

- environmental issues,
- consumer affairs,
- good study habits,
- mobile communications, and
- planning your holidays (e.g., Christmas or Reading week)

possible changes

This blog tries to cater to teenagers and early 20s folks who are, most certainly, social media savvy. And whilst we are offered a page that allows one to ‘access each blog,’ in reality it is one blog that offers one to read each author’s posts (see here bloggers go life). So every author is also accessible as a category.

Unfortunately, the media savvy audience is not given the opportunity to get each author’s contributions as an RSS feed or receive content by choosing one or two categories to be put into a feed. We have discussed this issue in more detail here: why RSS fails with my readers.

Another interesting result is that the blog does not offer readers an option to get posts via email. A bit surprising considering that maybe no more than 20% of Canada’s students use RSS.

I went to My.ComMetrics.com and entered the URL to get some preliminary statistics as shown to the right. PageRank with 4 is satisfactory for the Royal Bank blog. However, the number of backlinks seem a bit low. Maybe the difficulties outlined above regarding RSS feeds and lack of e-mail subscription option could be one explanation that the blog is not reaching as many as it otherwise could.

Digging a bit deeper with the My.ComMetrics.com tool one can calculate a few more statistics, such as:

• return on engagement – ROE for November 2008
  • conversation index – 24 posts – 11 comments = 0.458
  • consistency index – 24 posts over a 30 day period = 0.8
  • comment nugget index – 0 comments with URLs, 11 comments = 0
  • ComMetrics ROE index – about 35 points out of a 100

As we have pointed out previously it is the trends that matter. Therefore, we are interested how the above statistics look over a quarter or six months. I can inform you that looking over several months the findings look similar. For instance, July has 24 posts as well, about the same number of comments and 0 comments with URLs embedded in them. While the blog had 11 comments for the month of November, 5 were from one post and did add little if any value – hi nice post – were the kind of comments we collected. Nevertheless, our statistics show that the trends for this blog look upwards… good show!

The above preliminary findings indicate that when it comes to engagement, the blog still has some room for improvement.

bottom line

This blog has a clearly identified target audience made up of Canada’s unversity and college students. As importantly, bloggers are themselves members of the audience the blog is supposed to serve. Others prefer to use professional writers or journalists as does the OPEN Forum blog.

The blog is being used to build the bank’s brand and it does this quite successfully by letting the contributors focus on issues that matter to their peers. In turn, the bank’s products are featured rarely if ever. Hence, any student in Canada (a potential client – of course) might want to read the blog because it is interesting. This in itself is quite an achievement.

We should also take into consideration that this blog is just about 11.3 months old. So while there is room for improvement as outlined with the return on engagement indices above, this is to be expected with such a new venture. Hence, I congratulate the RBC team for their blogging efforts – keep up the good work and continue posting interesting stuff.

If you have a chance, check out their blog. Please let me know your take – do you agree with my conclusions?

Did I forget anything? Are you aware of another corporate blog where the bloggers are students? Do you have the URL? Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below – I am curious and want to know your take on this. Thanks for your help.

The Ups, Downs, Ins, and Outs of corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 company. American Express tries aggregating content to gather conversation. Does this attract new clients and also help build the brand?

Volvo, China Mobile, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, ABB, Swisscom and more – case studies about corporate blogs

Before You Start a Corporate Blog, Tie Your Shoe Laces Properly

happy birthday Daimler – blog that rocks

During 2008, several financial institutions have opened small business networks on the Web. Today we focus on:

American Express’ OPEN Forum

The owner of OPENforum.com describes the site as an education and networking resource. The site provides small business owners with practical, actionable information from business experts, celebrity business owners, and best-in-class bloggers and news outlets.

It is a project where AMEX through Federated has a blog area that aggregates interesting business content. The objective is to gather a conversation in a sponsored area by current clients who own a small business and those that might still become clients of AMEX’s products and services.

The ‘blog’ is essentially a way for AMEX to spread its brand by piggy bagging using blog content from various commissioned writers. Chris Brogan did a nice review shortly after the site opened:

2008-06-21 by Chris Brogan – American Express is open

In October 2008, American Express Company announced the launch of OPEN Forum’s Economy section, a new platform for small business owners. The site aims to give business owners a way to discuss how the current state of the economy affects their businesses. Looks as if the editor of this section – Anita Campbell and her team are one reason why the membership (5,400) and unique visitors (11,000) has nearly doubled since May 2008:

Look Who is Appearing on the American Express OPEN Forum

Advantages

1) For getting some benchmark data, I went to our web-based application and typed in the URL:

My.ComMetrics.com

Google PageRank of 5 is reported and some more stuff (CHECK IT OUT YOURSELF – see above link).

2) Calling the forum OPEN is smart, since OPEN is AMEX’s small business brand.

Accordingly, even the uninitiated person can figure out that this information forum is for small businesses owners sponsored by a small business geared credit card.

3) Having these experts write about issues that are of interest to small business owners in the U.S. means they get news content that is of value to them.

4) Another nice thing is that you can get access to the content without having to subscribe first.

Disadvantages

a) There is quite a bit of content coming your way each week. To reduce the time needed to read it all you can look at particular content section of the site only:

Small Business Trends Contributors — follows trends in small business.

Unfortunately, the RSS option does not allow you to subscribe to a particular section of this site or one writer’s content only (e.g., Guy Kawasaki – The sole of a new machine – Zappos is a machine).

b) If we consider that some claim about 20 percent of blog readers use RSS feeds, why not offer people to subscribe to the content using e-mail

c) While the site covers issues of interest to small business owners, the latter are a very heterogeneous group of individuals wanting different kind of content depending upon the:

- size of the small business – self-employed individuals have different needs for relevant information than a business with 100 employees; and

- retail versus wholesale biz – online vs. brick store – finance or building industry and so forth.

Not everybody can serve this heterogeneous group like Guy Kawasaki with the post – The Art of Bootstrapping. Good that he blogs for this site

Mastering these points will be critical factors when it comes to the future success of this blog. As well, resolving these issues will remove the obstacles that could prevent the site from reaching the objectives that were set for it, such as:

- How do the blog and its valuable content affect the bottom line for the OPEN brand?

- Will having this blog make AMEX’s cash register ring more often than without?

Conclusion

I like this blog very much. Nevertheless, if many large businesses do similar things as American Express did with this blog, content needs to be tailored specifically to readers one wants to reach – potential and current customers of the OPEN – small business – card American Express offers. Here there might still be some room for improvement.

I hope that the owners of the site will further tailor content to serve small business owners in particular areas.

I do not think I will subscribe to this blog right now even though I run a small business. Its content is a bit broad for my liking.

Please share your feedback, ideas, and critique.

Thanks.

PS. get the latest case study, insights and tips – subscribe

Register for this blog with your e-mail address

Better corporate blogging at a Fortune 500 company or an FT Global 500 is a constant challenge as this case study illustrates

Last week we discussed:

FT ComMetrics Global 500 blogs – case study – Swisscom

You can find more case studies about Fortune 500 and FT Global 500 blogs here in our archive:

corporate blogging – case studies – FT Global 500

Today we focus on Volvo and its corporate blogging efforts.

The first blog is the:

Volvo Business Environment Blog

This blog addresses, as the title would suggest environmental issues and is written by Edward Jobson, who holds the Volvo Buses Environmental Director position.

So to get some benchmark data I went to our web-based application and typed in the URL:

My.ComMetrics.com

As the above results show, just the preliminary findings do not suggest that the blog has reached its potential yet. Neither Google PageRank is high, nor can we find Technorati data about the blog. Yahoo! BackLinks are also minimal.

This seems unfortunate because the blog’s content is very interesting and addresses extremely important issues regarding bus transportation and the environment – including global warming and CO2 footprint issues.

Before we reflect and analyse this problem I thought I check and look at another of Volvo’s corporate blogs.

I found another interesting blog written by the Volvo’s IT crew supporting the Volvo Ocean Race teams with a working IT infrastructure.

The blog discusses the experiences and challenges the three IT experts must manage whilst taking care of IT infrastructure needed by the competing teams as well as the organizers. To make it easy on you to find the blog I list it here:

Volvo Ocean Race – 2008-2009 – Mission IT Blog

Again, preliminary benchmarks indicate that the blog is not reaching its potential (e.g., Google PageRank = 0).

Ropes to skip – what advice can we give the folks at Volvo?

So are there any lessons we can learn from these two Volvo blogs? To reach our blogging targets faster and with fewer resources, what mistakes should we try to avoid? Glad you asked. I tried to point out a few below without being too thorough with this.

Making it difficult to find your blog on the web. As the URLs suggest, it is not that easy to find the blog. For starters, why not use the Volvo domain with a sub-domain such as http://blogs.Volvo.com/VolvoOceanRaceIT – this enables the person that searches for the term blog on your website to find a list with blogs or else just type it in. Just visit www.volvo.com and search for either one of the two blogs. It will take some digging and, as importantly, a few more clicks to get to each blog.

Not registering a blog. Why not claim your blog on Technorati and other services. This helps increase its visibility. It will take no more than 5 minutes but be worth the effort for sure.

Leaving it unclear who your target audience is. It is hard to figure out who the main target audience is for either of the two blogs. Is it sailors or IT nerds for the Volvo Ocean Race IT Blog? Is it tree huggers or industrial buyers of Volvo buses for the Volvo Buses Environment Blog? Either of these groups is fine. However, write the content accordingly.

Making it a challenge to find my way. Offering visitors an archive and showing posting categories makes it a bit easier to find what I am looking for.

Not reaching beyond the more technically well-informed readership. Only about 13 to 20 percent of web users take advantage of RSS feeds. Hence, make it easier on the others by offering them a subscription that delivery your content via e-mail.

Allowing a vendor to use your blogging space for branding purposes. It is okay to brand yourself on the RSS feed by showing your logo.

However, why show the Windows logo – or any other vendor’s logo for that matter – prominently to the upper right of your RSS feed?

Letting a software vendor use your virtual space for branding purposes is not necessarily what you want to do … if it where open source software, such as Word Press I would understand. However, in this case Volvo pays Microsoft for using its software so why allow the latter to take such a prominent space for branding purposes?

Stay tuned, we will present you with more data about corporate blogs in upcoming weeks on this channel.

If you are a FT Global 500 corporation, register your company’s blog(s) to be included in the upcoming FT ComMetrics Blog Index ==> there are some very good reasons why you want your corporate blog(s) included

PS. Volvo’s blogs will be part of the FT ComMetrics Blog Index

Tidbit – generating money – you are always selling

Whatever business you are in, you are always selling. Selling your own product is smarter than selling someone else’s.

Type in your corporate blog’s URL at My.ComMetrics.com and track your blog’s performance.

A few days back I made a first attempt to define what criteria one might want to use and what not to describe a corporate blog:

Fortune 500 corporate blogging – Boeing, Chevron, Sun and Wal-Mart

The post got a few insightful comments that you may want to check out.

What it already showed is that things have gotten a bit more complex since 2004 when Fredrik Wackå published this definition 2004-06-18 – definition of a corporate blog:

“… A corporate blog is a blog published by or with the support of an organization to reach that organization’s goals…”

However, while one may have support to blog and blog about one’s work and employer, this does not mean it is a corporate blog. An example is Jeremiah Owyang – being a corporate blog evangelist. While Jeremiah began blogging under somebody else’s domain, he has in the meantime switched to his own domain. Nevertheless, he neither blogs under his current employer’s domain nor does the employer own the copyright… and so forth.

These are just a few of the criteria I use to decide if a blog is corporate blog or not as outlined here under Fortune 500 corporate blogging.

Today I want to address some additional issues and criteria that might help us in defining what a corporate blog is and what it might not be.

4 What is the difference between a dormant blog and one that is alive and vibrant?

While this is a difficult question to answer, regularly posting new content is one sign of a vibrant blog. Moreover, while your corporate blog’s followers or readers may not want to be overwhelmed with frequent posts, this does not imply being dormant for weeks or months is a viable option.

Instead, a new post every 7 to 9 weeks is probably the minimum to keep your followers and readers happy. Some would even argue that posting once each week is the minimum (see upcoming post where we will address this).

Numerous corporate blogs seem to fail this criterion. One example is the Nike basketball blog. Sometimes it does not have a new post for 13 or more weeks. In fact, it can take even longer giving one the impression the blog has gone dormant. However, Nike is in good company. Quite a few Fortune 500 corporations have dormant blogs, such as this one from Texas Instruments.

Whatever the objectives you wish to pursue with your corporate weblog, achieving this without posting new content in somewhat regular intervals is not the road to success.

5 Join the conversation

Social media means the reader can participate in the conversation. In turn, the corporate blog should provide people with the option to leave a comment and, thereby, join the conversation.

A few politicians seem to fail to grasp this basic concept (see politicians blogging – ropes to skip) by not offering their readers a chance to comment (e.g., German parliamentarians). The Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has a blog including a video one, nonetheless, you can try to join the conversation but you will not find comments written by readers anywhere on this blog.

Nevertheless, some corporate blogs from FT Global 500 companies do not do better. Readers can read and subscribe to the RSS feed but joining the conversation is impossible. This is something that needs correcting.

A blog that fails here fails an important criterion. How much people may participate by commenting about your corporate posts is one way to get input and feedback. Both are vital for improving one’s products and services. Why would one neglect this marvellous opportunity to improve is a mystery to me.

6 Social media means one has to give up some control

2006-09-09 Cornelius Puschmann pointed out that SAP is restricting access to their executive blogs.

When entering http://www.sap.com/community/pub/blogs.epx the non-registered user is served the following page:

Cornelius Puschmann asked SAP about this policy during 2006. You can see the answer he got from SAP here:

Cornelius Puschmann – SAP’s response to my criticsm

SAP is still trying to accept that social media does not allow one to exert total control. SAP has not changed its restrictive access policy to its executive blogs to this day.

Hence, these blogs are not accessible to the public. Representing the corporation means being accessible to the public and offering RSS and e-mail feeds without first requiring interested parties to register. Restricting access is not what social media is about.

This seems very detrimental to the blogosphere mantra. Let us hope that SAP sees the light one of these days.

Watch this space for getting to read about another three criteria we use to decide if a blog is corporate or not.

The FT ComMetrics corporate blog index ranks FT Global 500 corporate blogs
One of the best rankings of corporate weblogs on the internet ===> you should sign-up for My.ComMetrics.com – it is free

You may also want to look what Nils wrote about corporate blogs

FT ComMetrics Corporate Blogging Index ranks corporate blogs in trying to answer questions about your corporation’s blogging effectiveness.
But what about which blogs should be included in such a benchmarking exercise and which ones excluded. We tell you the criteria we use and how it works.

A company’s website is usually the first calling point for students getting ready to graduate and looking for jobs that they might want to apply for. Some companies may not really use their website for recruiting but, instead, try to improve branding or investor relations.

Whatever the blog tries to address, it certainly takes time and effort for successfully delivering the content your targeted audience is craving for. Most people talk about such things as:

- how to make the most of a corporate blog,

- which 50% of your marketing dollars are working?

But before we dive into all this important stuff, we have to agree what a corporate blog is and what it is not, as outlined below.

1 What is the difference between a business and a corporate blog?

Business blogs have been defined as those public blogs by company employees about the firm and its products and services (e.g., Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki). But such a definition is a bit too vague for our liking. We would like to use:

A corporate blog is a public blog by company employees about the firm’s products/services whereby copyright belongs to the company

Accordingly, employees running their own blog such as:

Rohit Bhargava ­ Vice President, Ogilvy PR , Jeremiah Owyang ­ Senior Strategist – Forrester Research

do not qualify as corporate blog using our definition. In both the above examples, neither does the firm have the copyright to the postings on these blogs, nor are the URLs/domains those used by the respective employers.

There are corporate blogs on domains different than those generally associated with the brand:

Oracle AppsLab or Mike Critelli, Executive Chairman, Pitney Bowes);

In both the above cases, the copyright is with the company, corporate logos are prominently shown and so forth.

Hence, copyright and corporate logos may be one indication that we are having a corporate blog in front of us.

2 What is the difference between a single event blog and ‘real’ blog?

Nevertheless, just because a blog is sponsored by a corporation does not make the blog a success either. While there is no ‘only way’ to blog, some employees exchange information and ideas with customers. And while one can design them more narrowly as well, a corporate blog covers more than one event, as illustrated with this blog.

Chevron Blog at World Petroleum Congress

The above blog was created for one conference, had numerous postings during the conference — and than it just died. There have been no postings on the above blog for months. One would expect that a corporate blog lives and continues to live. The Chevron example fails.

3 What is the difference between press releases versus a blog with corporate news?

The SEC has already agreed that news released on the corporate blog results in public disclosure

Nevertheless, this does not mean that a corporate blog works like a press release – or a blog is like one-way communication. An example how it should not be done is shown here:

Wal-Mart news – one way

In the above example, Wal-Mart publishes its news via the web and offers an RSS feed. But a blog lives by offering two-way communication. The company and its emploeeys publish interesting material while customers or suppliers can, if they wish, respond by leaving/writing a comment.

Of course, Wal-Mart does know how to do it right as this example shows:

Wal-Mart Checkout Blog

Next week we bring you three more criteria that one should use to determine if one has a corporate blog on one’s screen or a business blog instead.

What do you think? What classifies as a corporate blog and should employees be required to get permission before writing about what goes on at work?

Share your thoughts or work and blogging experiences in the comments below.