Corporate Blogging

General Motors has launched what is probably an ill-advised marketing website. At chevyapprentice.com/ they have a contest in which you can make a commercial for the 2007 Chevy Tahoe. The best commercial wins something.

However, what's happening is a bunch of people making activist type commercials.

Rather than something extolling the SUV, they're instead talking about global warming, destroyed environment and, in one case, a memorial from one brother to another who was sent to Iraq to fight for oil.

In September 2005 a pair of hurricanes hit New Orleans and the surrounding land. As a result much of New Orleans has effectively been destroyed. The government response to help the people of New Orleans and the surrounding land has been egregiously bad.

If blogging can be hazardous to your job (as this article says: Blogging may be hazardous to your job By Amy Rosewater, The Baltimore Sun) just how is that so? And, don't we have freedom of speech engraved in the U.S. Constitution?

What the article talks about is bitching about co-workers etc on the blog. That people get fired over that.

Well... okay...

Boy what a mountain formed out of this mole-hill. Jeremy Hermans was on an Alaska Airlines flight that experienced sudden cabin depressurization shortly after takeoff and made an emergency landing safely without anybody being hurt. But what made this emergency different is that Jeremy took a few pictures and wrote about it on his blog. His blog posting is full of emotion we who weren't there can only guess at.

Corporate blogging is on the rise. The big sign given in this article is that some job postings are now asking for an "ability to blog". That's certainly a sign ... Job descriptions add ability to blog, aid PR (Mary Jacobs, Dallas Morning News, Dec. 31, 2005 12:00 AM) The way Mary Jacobs spins this story, bloggers have been beating up on corporations for so long, and now it's time for corporations to bring some of them inside the corporate walls and use their knowledge of blogging practices for corporate benefit.

Here's a useful resource to help understand the scope of blogging by corporations. Corporate blogging is distinct from personal blogging in that the blogger is writing for the benefit of the corporation. Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki This is a list of the Fortune 500 companies who have blogging activities.

It's not just corporations adopting blogging, but some are toying with podcasting. Large corporations generally have some audio or video production crews already, so it's a natural extension for the output those crews make to be distributed on the Internet using the podcasting mechanism.

In Corporations podcast their marketing nets we see an overview of what's going on with corporate podcasting. It really runs the gamut.

Telstra is a large telecommunications company in Australia. I guess it's the Australian equivalent to what AT&T used to be in the U.S. Anyway, they've joined the ranks of companies that are blogging.

The web site is here: http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/ ... sigh, what a goofy name ... but then the goofy name just matches the goofy web site.

Another large organization is tentatively trying out the blogging waters: BBC Getting Into Blogging (Neville Hobson, Expert Author, Published: 2005-12-09)

The blog is located here: http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/nickrobinson/

LAFD - First Year of Blogging on the Map: Congradulations are in order to the LAFD for being a trendsetter in your field.