Why Every Company Should Blog

I've just been reading the drafts of the four interviews that Shel Israel posted in the past few days ... ... on Shel and Jonathan Schwartz, COO of Sun Microsystems; Micro Persuasion PR ber-blogger; and Ernest Svenson, aka table of contents for a better idea). The kind of person who might pick up a copy of the Jonathan Schwartz: Blogging's advantage, from his perspective, is in the transparency and authenticity that nothing else can provide. With more than 1000 company bloggers, people can see inside Sun in ways that are infinitely more valuable than Federal governance regulations. "Executives are missing a point. There is no perfect truth despite transparency." He argued that SEC requirements for quarterly reporting is far from as revealing as 1000 Sun bloggers talking about "the guts of the company," on a daily basis in a public forum. Sun's blogging explosion was embraced without ambivalence by the corporate communications people. "Most PR teams would cringe, but ours didn't. We have a transparent culture and competitors like HP do not. Our PR team is thinking about how to use technology and culture as a corporate weapon and blogging does both. [...] a key function of the communications team is to be an information gatherer, analyzer and counselor on participating in these communities. A bad way to do PR is to blast press releases every Thursday. We help feed the right information into the right channels. What could be better for a PR organization than blogs?" Steve Rubel: While Rubel remains the sole CooperKatz blogger, the entire agency has been touched by the communications medium. It is pervading the services offered. The firm produces new products to service existing clients and to offer to an increasing number of new prospects, according to Rubel. For example, they've developed a crisis management 'lockbox,' along the lines of, "In case of emergency, break this glass." The agency works with its clients to anticipate whatever crisis could possibly occur. They then plan and design a "failsafe" blog to be used if the emergency actually occurs. They know who will be the speakers, the issues that would be addressed and some of the toughest questions the client might face. If a client ever has to use the lockbox blog, they will be prepared to address their issue directly with the audiences who care most about it. Why is he so eager to help other agencies? He says that his nature is to be a connector and nearly all great bloggers are great connectors. "This best PR people have always been connectors. They've often had to be like Plasticman stretching between clients and press. Blogging is the best connection tool ever invented," he said. Unilever, it would be this: Blogging is the best connection tool ever invented. Neville Hobson is the author of the popular Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: