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Corporate Blogging is dead? I think not.

You only have to look to the market leader of social media the USA to see the way forward for social media.

This is a great fact found on the blog Ephiphany Solutions

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Centre for Marketing Research recently conducted a study showing that a greater proportion of the top 500 fastest growing private firms in the US are now turning to blogging for marketing purposes compared with last year.

It said that 39 per cent of these firms now have a blog, compared with 19 per cent in 2007.

I think there is a perception amongst marketers that there is a huge risk of the unknown and that social media is just a 'fad'. Evidence like this helps proves our case otherwise. It helps our cause in convincing clients to allocate time and money to social media. If you have any other gems please share them! :)

Armano and his famous cowboy hat

A new A-Lister to my iGoogle RSS Reader is David Armano's blog Logic + Emotion

I was inspired by Gavin Heaton's Mining the Gold section to have a look at Armano's Greatest Hits sections and I found 5 really great quoutes on company blogging in a post Why Blogging matters: 6 Degrees of Perspective from 2006,

Here is the Top 5 must use quotes on company blogging.

1. Blogosphere Economics-
The blogosphere has disrupted the economics of publishing, dramatically lowering the costs of content creation (most bloggers are not paid), content production (free blogging platforms) and circulation development (free links by other bloggers).

Eric Kintz, Global Marketing Strategy at Hewlett-Packard

2. Touch Point Discontinuity
The biggest risk for brand in initiating corporate blogs is creating what I’ll call “touch-point discontinuity." At the end of the day: we need present ourselves consistently across all consumer touchpoints.

Pete Blackshaw is Chief Marketing Officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics

3. Blogs as catalyst of change
Blogging is a great way to put a fresh new face on a corporate structure, but the rest of the organization can't be too far behind. As corporate leaders, we need to develop the right strategies and tactics to ignite and catalyze positive change leveraging blog tools and methods while keeping the rest of the organization in tow

Pete Blackshaw is Chief Marketing Officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics

4. Blogs are Consumer Affairs
A blog should sit within consumer affairs department, customer service wants to reduce attention to company where marketing and PR want to increase attention.

Pete Blackshaw is Chief Marketing Officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics

5. Blogging is the ultimate Marketing Challenge
Anyone who runs a successful blog should consider themselves a marketer even if they are not. The reason for this is simple. The blogoshphere is filled literally millions lf blogs—over 55 million and growing. That’s a lot of noise and clutter. It’s not very different from the traditional marketing challenge which entails developing content and experiences that break through clutter and connect with the consumer. And further, most influential bloggers act as “personal brands” meaning that they connect with their readers on a personal if not emotional level and foster “brand” affinity and loyalty. So if you’ve been able to do this a blogger, then you’ve learned something about the meaning of brands and relationships

Daivd Armano, VP at Critical Mass

Do you have any good quotes on blogging to add?

Read more about Platform Creation here

Amazon has always been one of the pioneers in terms of Social Media Marketing. Amazon was one of the first to create Web2.0 tools, with product review tools.

Recently they have started twittering their Deal of the Day. This is slowly becoming more specialized with AmazonMP3 Deal of the Day as well. They join Woot, as examples of online e-commerce site spruiking their daily specials online. These are two great examples of companies creating their own platforms of communication (Platform Creation) with consumers. Thanks to Marketing Geek for the tip and Get Elastic for the Woot example.

'All hail the new King of Social Media'

I just keep finding great examples from the music industry of the power of social media and to support my Social Media Marketing Framework.

The latest is a bit of hip hop news but it is great example of the difference between Idea Propagation and Platform Creation. There has been a recent beef (argument) between old school gangster Ice T and 16 year old New Media Juggernaut, Souljah Boy. You probably remember Souljah Boy from his song/video/dance ‘Crank That’ which started as a grassroots movement on Youtube and pushed over too traditional media channels and became a dance classic of 2007.

Anyway Ice T came out on little known DJ Cisco Mixtape and dissed Souljah Boy by saying he ‘single handley killed hip hop’ and he can ‘go eat a dick’. Anyway Souljah Boy responded by posting a response video on his Youtube channel. The video has now been viewed by over 1,000,000 people while the mixtape is riding off the success of the beef.

Your always going to be stronger if you have your own audience and do not have to borrow an audience from another media property. Ice T initial comments were probably heard by 5,000 people who bought the mixtape whereas Souljah Boys response was heard by 1,000,000 people through his own media platform (Youtube Channel).

The great thing about Platform Creation is that you get to choose what information gets out to your audience and when, whereas Idea Propagation will suffer from being controlled by when the media channel wants to publish their content.
Read more about Idea Propagation hereRead more about Platform Creation here

The Body Shop Activist Blog is a great example of brand positioning through Channel Creation. Activism has always been a core value of the Body Shop brand. Through producing content (blog posts) on this subject they are reinforicing their brand values of ‘ Support Community Trade, Activate Self Esteem, Defend Human Rights, and Protect Our Planet.

Thanks to Jake for the tip- Who is equally bemused as me, with the site being powered by renewable wind energy, WTF?

Read more about Platform Creation here