Blogging and Me

How a blog could help my company.  By Walker Neer

I currently work as a partner owner/operator in a very small company that is in the service industry.  We provide full service junk removal to the greater Springfield metropolitan area.  Maintaining a blog is something that has been suggested to us in the past. We only have three people working in the business and we are all local, so there is not really a need for an internal only blog.  A blog for customers to read is a concept that has always been intriguing but I have never understood how to create content appropriate for the blog. 

Some of the benefits of maintaining a blog would be exposure, creating brand loyalty and getting customer feedback.  We really have two customer bases, one is residential consumers, who typically use us for a one time need and the other customer base is made up of real estate agents, property managers, landlords, and real estate bankers.   Establishing a blog that people find interesting would be a great way for us to maintain contact with our one time need customers.  While these people might not call every week or month, if we could keep them engaged with us via a blog, we would have a better opportunity to retain their business in the future.  A blog could help us maintain better business to business client relationships , as they use our service more frequently, and a blog provides a way for us to easily communicate new ideas and best practices.  An enthusiastic fan of the blog is also more likely to give word of mouth referrals to their friends, family, and colleagues for not only our service but also the blog.  A blog could prove to be one of the cheapest and most effective marketing strategies available to us.  It would be important to create meaningful, interesting content to keep people coming back.

Caterpillar Corporate Blog Review

Caterpillar Corporate Blog Review by Walker Neer

Caterpillar is known for their heavy duty machinery, so I was skeptical about the value of a blog for a company in that type of industry.  The Caterpillar Corporate blog is indeed a terrific blog.  The individual posts are well written and interesting.  The blog covers a huge range of topics including best practices, success stories, and more.  The blog does an excellent job of keeping the company engaged with its customers.  Many of the posts end with a call to action to the readers, to respond or contribute to the conversation with comments.  This allows the company to understand their customer in a much more real time fashion and allows the customer to feel like they can have a hand in improving Caterpillar’s products.

The blog provides profile pages for the various contributing authors, which allows the reader to more easily understand the author’s background and role within Caterpillar.  Some of the posts share success stories from Caterpillar customers who have had success in their own business using Caterpillar products.  This is great free marketing for these companies and offers new information to the reader.  Some of the articles also mention various trade shows and events that Caterpillar attends, which gives readers info on opportunities to meet and interact with the company face to face.  The “best practices” blog posts show that Caterpillar is committed to not only selling their product but also working to ensure that their customers get the most out of the product.

In summary Caterpillar provides an interesting read via its blog.  The company also educates their customers on a variety of topics.  Feedback is encouraged from the readership of the blog, and Caterpillar demonstrates its commitment to responding to customer needs as they evolve.  Caterpillar has proved that a blog can be of benefit to any company regardless of industry.

Will Calton How a blog can help me

   Will Calton- Business Comm 140

  I feel that by using a blog I can achieve more success in my profession. Though I am technically unemployed I do, and have done consulting with other businesses. I think it would be beneficial to me for networking and customer interaction to create and maintain a blog about my career.
   It would greatly benefit my career to have a blog to inform potential and previous customers about my skills and both successes and my failures on a professional level. This will develop a better sense of openness with my clients and improve the exposure I can attain. Increasing my public perception on what I do and what I have done would create more customers or consultations in the future and give a since of my range of abilities.
   I have worked for many companies, most of which have little corporate identity on the internet aside from a basic page. One of my previous employers, Domino's Pizza, does have a corporate site with blog like information and numerous franchises around the country utilize a blog to enhance product knowledge and public relations. But many smaller companies do not utilize this medium as most of them commit very little time or energy to more than "word of mouth" advertising. It is my thinking that blogging is a more effective form of "word of mouth" advertising as it not only reaches existing and potential customers but it creates future customers by adding a public forum with which to communicate with the world and allowing them to research on their own terms.
   There are many ways to get he word out about your business but a blog is an excellent choice. With an open ended forum and its low cost a blog can do many things targeted marketing cannot for a much cheaper price. Though it takes some time to get information together and posted, the information does not need to constantly be reviewed or edited. One can simply post a new blog on a regular basis to update clients and potential customers on what is going on withing the organization.

Will Calton - Review of GE corporate blog site. GE reports corporate blog.

   After looking through the massive amount of information on the General Electric reports website, I found it a very useful blog on corporate identity. It is primarily a blog for product knowledge. They complex products built and designed by GE are plentiful. This blog includes both stories and video information on various projects being worked on as well as those that are already in use. The worlds largest jet engine, reducing MRI machine noise, and projects to improve water quality are just a few of the interesting things I was able to read about while researching this blog. A news feed keeps many recent headlines involving GE and a Twitter feed from the company also gives insight into recent developments.
    General Electric certainly stays busy with a number of very different products and it is easy to see that light bulbs and appliances are not the only way the company is improving technology and designing unique solutions to many varied problems. The blog has articles separated into 4 main categories, Powering, Moving, Building, and Curing are the areas that GE has separated their feature stories into. Powering includes an article on how GE is designing and building giant turbines for the country of Algeria for their electrical systems benefit. Under Moving there is a very good article on 3d printing, a technology though new it is quickly becoming a boon to many different fields. Building includes a video presentation on how the "industrial internet" works and is very insightful. Finally under Curing the practice of softening residual noise in some medical equipment is discussed. The stories are very well written and one feels as though they actually learned things they didn't know about GE and its wide range of products previously.
   Aside from stories, videos, and some photos there is a section of the blog dedicated to graphics. There are a number of easy to read graphics and charts to a variety of GE related information. I am more visual and enjoyed many of these graphics.
   In conclusion, my overall opinion of GE did change some when I realized the numerous products and research the scientists at GE are involved in. I found it very educational to look into varied fields and technologies that this company is involved.