There are many blogging platforms that allow individuals to express themselves. The list includes, but is not limited to the following: WordPress, Spaces, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, etc. While these platforms are great for the technology and idea specific enthusiast, these platforms present great challenges for companies. The top areas were these platforms impact enterprises are brand, compliance, and contiguous content.
Brand.
Typically, blogging platforms allow for user experience (UI) customization and branding. However, the majority of these company blogs are implemented using the platform’s standard set of templates. In general, these templates do not match or comply with the corporate or enterprise brand.
Compliance.
Given that these platforms are typically hosted outside of the corporate infrastructure, there is little to no ability for the company to ensure that the messages and content are in line with corporate policies.
Contiguous Content.
Knowledge capital is one of the greatest assets in a company. Be it industry expertise or thought leadership, having this content in disparate platforms introduce the challenge of being able to aggregate, search and leverage this knowledge.
Companies need to understand the benefits of blogging and using (SAAS) “software as a service” platforms. Are you building your corporate brand by leveraging these platforms? By using these platforms can you measure are provide quantitative information about how they are being used? Is this content aggregated, searchable or indexed from your existing web site? If not, you may need to implement an enterprise blogging strategy that builds on and integrates into your overall marketing plan.