Electronic Media

Electronic Media by Walker Neer

I have learned about several forms of electronic media and how they can be utilized in the business world over the last couple of weeks.  I was most interested in corporate blogs and Twitter. 

I was very surprised to see the quality of blogs available from a variety of industries.  I was familiar with blogging but had always thought of blogs as being their own independent companies.  I knew people had personal blogs and I was familiar with blogs that review music, movies, games, food etc. that were contributed to by multiple people.  I had never really considered or been aware of blogs that were operated by companies who provided products or services that were not related to the blog.   Perhaps a better summary is that I thought blogs were always a product and had not considered a blog being used to support a product.  I was very surprised by the company Caterpillar’s blog.  I wrote a review of that blog here, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say that Caterpillar demonstrates how a company that is involved in an industry that is in no way related to information technology can utilize a blog to great effect. 

Twitter was something familiar to me prior to these last two weeks.  I have used Twitter a very small amount, but I do think it offers some benefits to companies.  I am a pretty avid gamer and in today’s gaming world a game is rarely complete when it launches.  What I mean by this is that most developers continue to release updates for bugs or additional content after a game has launched.  Twitter has been used to great effect by many developers who use the service to update their followers on update schedules or on links to forums or websites with more detailed information.

The last two weeks didn't really change my opinion of Twitter as I was already aware of some of its possible uses.  I definitely learned quite a bit about corporate blogging though and feel I have a better understanding of how it can be applied.  I discussed how I might utilize blogging for my own business here.