Max Kalehoff from Attention Max left an interesting wind of insight on a post "Why Marketers Should Blog".
Blogging is one of the best ways for a person to internalize and
sensitize one’s self to the essence of
marketing. Because when you
blog, you essentially expose your ego and subject it to the most
important and intense dimensions of marketing, media, communications,
networks and individual relationships. While I’m still learning and
growing with this evolving platform, blogging has brought me far closer
in touch with my profession than any other pursuit.
Well said...and with over half of companies (55% according to Melcrum) saying that blogging is at least in their plans, if marketers don't get over their hangup, check their egos and lead this piece than someone else will galdly fill the vacuum.
The interesting question here may be "who"? Given different appetites for transparency, expertise in social media, orientation to good communication and dialogue and ability to credibly represent the company, the jury is still out in mind.
The nominees for Best Supporting Communicator in a Corporate Blogging Role are:
The Expert - a hired or outsourced expert in social media communications, usually with the title "evangelist", "ambassador" or "community leader"
The Marketer - a collective department or the senior representative of a company's marketing department or brand
The Internal Flack - the PR or public affairs spokesperson for a company or brand
The Techie - the person who pulls together all the bits and bytes and suddenly realizes he/she's authoring content too
The Journalist - a hired gun from newspaper, magazine or web land, who drinks the corpoarte kool-aid and starts waxing poetic, sometimes a ghost writer and other times revealed
The User/Consumer - the ultimate form of crowdsourcing, have your citizen marketers author your blog content
The CEO - Jonathan Schwartz from Sun Microsystems has taken up the cause, it's plausible other people in corner office will to
The Agency Flack - the blog becomes the new press release, same person, different job and format
The Agency - with vlogging on the rise, everybody with a camera phone, a premium on design, perhaps its the artistic and aesthetic who will lead the future
The Research Wonk - a plethora of insight and numbers from the frontlines
The Strategy Head - mining prosumers and industry early adopters for the next big thing
The HR Department - a surprising choice, maybe - but as someone that may be more responsible for incubating company culture than anybody else, perhaps a great choice
The Customer Service Face - true justice, the person who receives the majority of inbound customer communication, is the person who feeds and answers it back
The Sales Rainmaker(s) - by and large, sales people are the most entertaining and interesting people in the corporate scene, oftentimes closest to their customers and great storytellers
The Corporate COO - uses the blog to create internal steerage more than external direction
The Studio Guy - you want a podcast and don't know where to start, get the guy behind the wall to lead and manage your show
Anybody who Wants to - nearly 75% of company's have yet to define internal rules on blogging - perhaps the Wild West of transparency will triumph
And winner goes to....
P.S. I'd be interested to know if anybody has stats on this currently (I personally haven't seen any)
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