Corporate types getting into blogging

With the connection between new media and business development, many corporations have turned to blogging to try and better communicate with their customers. Project Navigator has developed a PRP blog, http://www.prpblog.com/, and uses this tool to facilitate information exchange with our own clients.

Excerpt from LA Times Article: Corporate types getting into blogging
Experts say it’s a useful tool for talking directly to customers or giving a personal touch to a big business. Jason Calacanis, who got into blogging early and big, has quit.

He co-founded a network of blogs called Weblogs in 2003, before the medium cracked the mainstream, and then sold it to AOL in 2005, working there until 2007. Today he is chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine guided by editors rather than algorithms.

After five years of writing on tech industry topics as well as personal ones and building an audience of 10,000 to 20,000 daily visitors, Calacanis said, he got tired of all the nasty comments and “link-baiters,” people who post comments just to promote their own blogs. So he signed off, leaving the blogosphere to others.

One group that has been firing up its keyboards is corporate types. Of about 112.5 million blogs on the Web, almost 5,000 are corporate, according to blog indexer Technorati. Calacanis blogged to start conversations and be a part of a virtual community, but corporate bloggers are in it for other reasons: to talk directly to customers or give a personal touch to a big business.

“It’s a phenomenal promotion vehicle for a company, or a great crisis tool or a great customer service tool,” said Geoff Livingston, a public relations strategist and social media expert.
Honest Tea Inc. of Bethesda, Md., launched its blog in late 2005 as a way to get close to customers. With a name like Honest Tea, Chief Executive Seth Goldman said, “we’re trying to be as open and disclose as much information as we can.”

When the company announced that Coca-Cola Co. would acquire a 40% interest in the brand, many of Honest Tea’s customers who opposed the agreement took their complaints to the blog.

Click here for the full LA Times article.