Business Blogs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

by Liz Fuller on January 15th, 2008

(businessandblogging.com) Very soon we’re going to start reviewing the business blogs of the Fortune 500 and the Global Fortune 500. That may seem like a daunting task, but since fewer than 10% of the F500 corporations have an external blog - it’s a more manageable task than you might think. (We’re still working on the list of companies from the Global F500, but as you can imagine there’s a lot of overlap on the two lists)

My prediction is that by the time we have exhausted our list of blogs, there will be a whole lot more of them out there. There was huge worldwide growth of social media in 2007. Many indications are that 2008 is going to be a year of explosive growth for social media and word of mouth advertising Blogging is one of the easiest, fastest, and cheapest ways for businesses, both big and small, to engage their customers in spreading their word for them.

So, how should we evaluate the corporate blogs that do exist?

Laura and I’ve come up with this list of criteria that we think the best corporate blogs should have. This might change as we start working through the list as we, like you, may learn a few things about what can and should be done with corporate blogs.

We are going to categorize blogs into three classes:

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

(my husband’s favorite movie - can’t you just hear the theme music???)

Good Blogs will be:

easy to find
frequently updated
written in an engaging manner
relevant
focused
honest
interactive
responsive

Bad blogs will be:

hard to find
infrequently updated
censored
one-way communication
unresponsive
defensive

Ugly blogs will be:

boring
inaccurate or misleading
filled with technical jargon (for a non-technical audience)
full of regulations and legal disclaimers
self-absorbed
press releases in disguise

What do you think? Did we miss any?

Quick - take a look at your blog - where does it fall? Good, Bad or Ugly??

(gulp!) Where do you think Businessandblogging falls????

Our first review will start with one of the oldest and most famous corporate blog - GM’s Fastlane started in 2005. Look for it soon!

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