A first attempt at a categorization (II)
The beauty of taxonomies is that they will never fit with the darned data. Since making my first proposal for a categorization of corporate blogs, I have examined my corpus more closely and consequently I’ve had to update my categories. The communicative purpose behind a blog is now the deciding factor. All blogs are assigned a category based on what their main focus is, from products (narrowest) to general/multi-purpose (widest).
Blogs by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the exception. I felt that a separate category will be needed, since they tend to very greatly in terms of focus and are created in a different organizational context than blogs belonging to the other categories. Because of these differences, I’m going to save SMB blogs for another post.
So here are the new and improved categories:
A. Product Blogs
Written by: marketing
Target audience: customers
Examples (direct):
Guinness Blog (Guinness & Co)
Nike Basketball (Nike)
Examples (indirect):
bugBlog (RESCUE/Sterling International)
Thompson Holiday Blog (TUI UK)
Real Baking with Rose Levy Beranbaum (General Mills)
Product blogs aim to
a) to promote a product directly,
b) to generate a discussion centered on the product and
c) to address issues closely related to the company’s products.
Guiness and Nike both center their blogs on the product itself, whereas RESCUE, TUI and General Mills give issues directly related to the product the main focus. Real Baking [..] stands out among the cited examples because it places blog author and award winning baker Rose Levy Beranbaum at the center, whereas the other four blogs are either anonymous (RESCUE, Nike, TUI) or written by bloggers only identified by first name (Guinness). Of all blog types examined, product blogs stand out as the only type where anonymous posting is common.
B. Image/Lobbying Blogs
Written by: PR
Target audience: customers/public
Examples:
Life at Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart)
Open for Discussion (McDonald’s)
Digital Straight Talk (Cox Communications)
The Bovine Bugle (Stonyfield Farm)
From Edison’s Desk (General Electric Company)
Image/Lobbying blogs seek to
a) to create a positive public perception of a company,
b) to actively shape the public discussion of a company and its products,
c) to advance company interests in regards to policy (lobbying) and
d) to preempt or react to criticism from customers.
Wal-Mart and McDonald’s aim to refute public criticism of their business practices (Wal-Mart) and products (McDonald’s) through their blogs, while Cox is both product-focused and noticeably targets the competition. Stonyfield Farm and GE use their blogs to bring attention to their commitment to the environment (SF) and their research (GE). The common goal is to convince consumers and the general public that the company is dedicated to corporate responsibility. Though having a different focus (on the customer) Dell’s Direct2Dell blog also falls into this category, as I do not see CRM as a distinctly separate type. Blogs may serve to influence the public’s perception, including the sentiments of disgruntled customers, but as a tool for troubleshooting they are not very useful.
C. Industry Blogs
Written by: experts
Target audience: other experts
Examples:
OraBlogs (Oracle)
IBM developerWorks (IBM)
eBay Developers Program (eBay)
IEBlog (Microsoft)
Industry blogs are blogs which are written
a) to inform other experts inside or outside of the company about issues related to specialized fields such as engineering/software development/hardware r&d etc,
b) to seek information and advice from other experts about such issues and
c) as as a mnemonic instrument for the author.
They are most often authored by experts in a subject area which is relevant to the company and manifest a frequent use of jargon. They are also frequently aggregated and topically tagged.
D. Strategy Blogs
Written by: executives
Target audience: shareholders
Examples:
Jonathan Schwartz, CEO Sun Microsystems
John Mackey, CEO Whole Foods Market
Usually written by executives, strategy blogs are blogs which may
a) discuss the position of the corporation and its products in the market,
b) evaluate competitors and their products,
c) legitimate management decisions such as layoffs, restructuring, expansion etc. and
d) outline future strategic goals.
The subtype is set apart by the fact that a) authors tend to hold senior positions in the corporate hierarchy and b) both the job title and the name of the author is virtually always integrated into the blog’s title. While CIOs and CTOs are usually most strongly concerned with product development (i.e. software), CEOs, COOs and most VPs primarily discuss industry issues.
E. General/Multipurpose Blogs
Written by: multiple
Target audience: varies
Examples:
“Kara R” (Honeywell)
General/multipurpose blogs differ from blogs belonging to the categories described above in that they are
a) written by a plethora of employees belonging to a large variety of departments (human resources, accounting, security) and/or
b) cover subject areas and serve purposes not commonly found in other blogs.
The Honeywell blog fall into that category, as its primary goal seems to be to facilitate recruiting. The Yahoo! and Google blogs are general-purpose sources as outlined in a). Common traits of blogs in this category are the lack of a single dominant focus and the the high degree of authorship variation. They may also extend the informative function usually occupied by press releases.
