Critical literature review of building successful corporate blogs Essay

There are a limited number of studies investigating the elements that characterize a successful blog. In their study, Cass, Munroe and Turcotte (2005) addressed several issues regarding the creation of successful blogs by conducting an online survey and six case studies. The following are the questions they attempted to answer: â€Å"Why would a company want to start blogging? What makes a blog successful? And how can companies use this type of website to facilitate positive business growth? † (Cass, Munroe, & Turcotte, 2005). Their survey consists of 32 questions addressing the questions previously mentioned. A total of 97 people took the survey, 75 of which are bloggers and 22 are non-bloggers, 77% of which are male and 23% are female. However, they only posted results from respondents who claim that they ran a corporate blog. Backbone Media, Inc. developed the survey page consisting of 32 questions addressing the questions previously mentioned and interviewed 6 coporate corporate blogger. Majority of the bloggers are between the ages 30 and 39. Fifty-two percent of the respondents achieved an undergraduate level and 48% achieved graduate level indicating that most of them are highly educated. â€Å"The positions of the bloggers include president (45%), head of department (33%), and staff (22%). Seventy-three percent of the bloggers come from companies with 1-100 companies while 19% come from companies with over 500 employees. † (Cass, Munroe, & Turcotte, 2005). These percentages of bloggers indicate that small, medium and large companies have been influenced by the blogging innovation. Results of the survey indicated that respondents believe that corporate blogs provide an array of benefits such as â€Å"quick publishing, thought leadership, building community, sales and online public relations. † (Cass, Munroe, & Turcotte, 2005). Results show that bloggers immediately notice that their ideas are published quickly but the biggest benefit for them is thought leadership and sharing of ideas. The interviews and the case studies provided guidelines for other companies in creating a successful corporate blog. According to Cass et. al. , since thought leadership is thought to be the biggest benefit provided by corporate blogs, it is best to discuss thought leadership to build a successful blog community. They also suggest that companies should encourage their bloggers to write more about their products and their services. Also, Cass et. al. (2005) emphasize that â€Å"new ideas should come from both the blogger and from customers†. A more recent study addressing the issue on creating a successful corporate blog is Cass and Carl’s (2006) Blogging Success Study. In their study, they tried to select and define the elements that constitute a successful corporate blog. They interviewed 20 successful corporate bloggers from different size of firms and industries. (Cass & Carl, 2006). They also conducted case studies explaining how these twenty corporate bloggers achieved success. As a solution, these are 5 main factors contribute to a successful corporate blog: â€Å"culture, transparency, time, dialogue, and entertaining writing style and personalization. † (Cass & Carl, 2006). In the case of Sony Playstation blogspot, wherein the blogspot which was not really that good in terms of content, and wherein, there were many bloggers yet there were only a few of them whose writings really matter and much of the content is somewhat personal or is considered as â€Å"noise†. The corporation acted with fluidity and immediately controlled the blogspot, by not accepting topics which the company has already addressed. In an article by Mark White (2007) a blog consultant in corporate blogging, he stresses some of the important points for a corporation to consider in managing good blogspots. He cites listening, clarity and openness, forward thinking, developing, and giving options as some points which a corporation has to live up to in order to have a good corporate blogspot. To maintain manageability of some corporate blogspots, it is important that the corporate executives themselves read what is written on the blogs and innovate and manage the blogs which are presented to them. On a separate topic, White (2007) also discussed the ideal way of managing blogs. White suggests that as a corporate blogger, one must publish on a regular basis, stay on planned topics, always keep readers in mind, make blog titles attractive in all senses, cite references of other cites, make sure that spelling and grammar are well, check back planning documents, reference foundation articles, and encourage follow ups to comments. Building corporate blogs of course takes time and a lot of effort and patience, but as long as corporate executives are managing the blogspace efficiently, and there is control over the content as well as the topics within the blogs, the blogspace would mean a lot for the corporations as benefits would definitely hit the ceiling. Corporate blogs can be helpful in making others see what its culture really by being transparent with their motives behind blogging. It must be open in engaging dialogues with customers. Blogs must also contain personal connection between the writer and the reader. Because of these considerations, setting up corporate blogs requires a lot of time. Thus, companies must be able to identify the person or persons who will be able to devote enough time in setting up blogs that can be trusted not only by customers but by their co-workers as well. These studies help to determine how bloggers perceive the notion of corporate blogging. Moreover, knowing the history of the development of blogging will help in understanding how and why the public accepted blogging as a kind of new and advantageous innovation. However, empirical research has not yet been undertaken regarding this matter. Thus, the present study will give an empirical research on the perception of bloggers on corporate blogging to determine their rate of acceptance on corporate blogging.