From the BtoB website:
BtoB recently interviewed key bloggers and social media experts at these companies to take the pulse of corporate blogging. The conversations reveal the following trends: the emergence of chief blogger as a corporate job title; the globalization and segmentation of corporate blogs; the emergence of accepted metrics for measuring the success of blogging efforts (see sidebar, page 48); and mixed feelings about CEO blogs.
I found this article interesting - and I carefully considered the points in the above-quoted paragraph:
CHIEF BLOGGER: I am the original blogger at Indium, and still the "chief blogger". That said, there are a few very savvy people on our blogging team that are really doing a great job. It may be time to share this title.
GLOBALIZATION: One of Indium's original goals was (and is) to blog on electronics assembly in Chinese. We have been doing that for months now. Some issues are: our CHIEF BLOGGER doesn't speak/write Chinese, so comprehension, support, guidance, review are not possible, and we want to blog in other languages and are still developing this program.
SEGMENTATION: Indium is blogging to market segments including: Pb-free, halogen-free, semiconductor, printed circuit board assembly, solar photovoltaic, thermal interface materials, and more. This ties into another topic discussed in the article: EVANGELIST BLOGGERS. Indium enjoys a handful of technology evangelists who are helping to lead the industries' conversations in these areas. Evangelist bloggers really enable segmentation blogging. I am thrilled to have such evangelists on my team.
METRICS: our goal is to drive visits to our site and to establish ourselves as strong, contributing participants in each marketplace. So, we measure visits to our blogs - and not much else. We'd love to learn of a more meaningful and effective metric.
CEO BLOG: we really don't see a strong need for or benefit of a "CEO BLOG". We will continue monitoring the concept.
The article's final paragraph reads as follows:
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All of our bloggers have day jobs as engineers or executives, and that imposes limits to how much time they can devote to blogging,Ó” Rodkins said. Fortunately we are starting to see a gradual shift in the organization whereby blogging and other conversational marketing activities are called out as part of an employee's job description, and participation in these activities is recognized as a contribution in the employee's performance evaluation. The importance of this step cannot be underestimated if an organization is truly committed to blogging.Ó”"Rodkins" is Annie Rodkins, Intel's program manager for Web marketing. Her comment is spot on. I would like to develop this statement one step further and include the underlying goal. Indium (and, I am sure Intel) are not blogging for blogging's sake. We are blogging(ultimately) to enhanceour revenue, profit, and/or brand.
Image: BtoB logo.