15 corporate blogs worthy of imitation

If you want to publish a great corporate blog, read the best corporate blogs and learn from them.

There is certainly a paucity of top-flight corporate blogs. They’re hard to find. But we’ve been given a valuable assist by the American Express’ Open Small Business site which published an article titled 15 Excellent Corporate Blogs to Learn From.

The article, written by Erica Swallow of Mashable, summarizes the strengths featured by these blogs. Each is spotlighted for a different reason, which underscores the many options to be considered and choices to be made while bringing a blog into being.

Here’s the rundown. Check them out. Learn from them. Emulate the best ideas most suitable to what your blog is trying to accomplish.

1. Squarespace is cited for its user-friendly and visually appealing design. Grace Smith, a contributing writer to the social media website Mashable, calls Squarespace “one of the best designed corporate blogs around.”
2. Dell for its landing page, which organizes multiple blogs published by the company. If you have a large organization with several divisions or lines of business that require several channels of information, the landing page on the Dell site might be a fine one to emulate.
3. 37signals Product Blog is a good example of how a blog can effectively showcase a company’s products and services – and keep them updated. To keep the site from becoming too promotion, 37signals publishes two blogs, one called Signal vs. Noise that focuses on “design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture and more,” and another called The Product Blog, which highlights the company’s wares.
4. Zillow is an example of a blog that publishes valuable information about its area of expertise, which happens to be real estate values in Zillow’s case. Look up any property on Zillow and it will give you a market value based on the sale of comparable properties in the vicinity.
5. PlayStation.Blog takes advantage of the so-called Wisdom of Crowds by gleaning ideas from its readers. This blog has a section titled PlayStation.Blog Share where readers can submit and vote for ideas for improving PlayStation products.
6. Disney Parks captivates its followers by taking them behind the scenes at the legendary company. The blog’s archives are divided into several categories, one of the largest of which is Behind the Scenes. This category contains posts about dance rehearsals, sneak peeks at new construction sites, interviews with employees, and so on.
7. BBC’s The Editors Blog is credited with bringing readers into the news reporting process. The blog allows readers to air their opinions on how news is being covered by the British Broadcasting Company, while also weighing in on issues faced by BBC News editors.
8. GM FastLane Blog teaches the value of keeping a weblog focused on a company’s core activity. Though that sounds obvious, too many corporate blogs don’t have narrow enough content guidelines, and that can result in articles that veer off track. Some recent posts on GM FastLane include a webchat on how to build a Corvette engine and a post on how to pre-order the 2011 Chevrolet Volt.
9. Evernote sports a blog that takes full advantage of multimedia, including photos, videos and podcasts. The site’s streamlined design smoothly integrates several categories – such as product updates, tips and stories, friends and partners, podcasts and general business updates – and segments them into tabs for easy browsing.
10. Flickr, the popular photo site, maintains a blog that highlights the creative work of its community members. People love to participate. They love to be showcased. The Flickr blog curates photos and videos from its people.
11. O’Reilly Radar understands an important principle about human nature: People are interested in communicating with other people far more than with companies. This blog shucks the corporate voice in favor of allowing its employees to write in their own voices about their areas of expertise.
12. The Official Google Blog, like the O’Reilly Radar blog, culls insights from people across the company. Google blogs comes from software engineers, technical program managers, vice presidents of search products and user experience, entertainment marketing associates, programs specialists, etc. Diversity is the operative word here.
13. Marriott on the Move, a blog published by the international hotel giant, takes a very different approach by going right to the top – to the CEO’s office. Bill Marriott pens the articles that appear in this blog, ensuring the company speaks with an authoritative and influential voice. And it allows readers to directly interact with the man at the top.
14. eBay Ink integrates its own blog with other social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Richard Brewer-Hay, eBay Ink’s chief blogger, uses his blog and the aforementioned social media sites to act as a facilitator for telling stories and sharing experiences from around eBay.
15. The Counterintuitive CEO, run by Forrester Research chief executive George Colony, demonstrates how to promote a blog. This blog does a standout job of promoting itself with search engine marketing (SEM). While searching for “ceo blog” on Google, you’ll run across his blog in the “sponsored links” section, where paid Google AdWords ads are displayed.

There you have it, a plethora of ideas to inspire and improve your blog.

If you would like to read the full article, click here.

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