Business and Blogging

Kodak: A Thousand (Blogging) Words Are Better Than A Picture

by Laura Spencer on January 30th, 2008

One of our goals here at Business and Blogging is to take a look at the blogs that are aleady out there, focusing first on blogs from some of the leading corporations.

Liz outlined the criteria for reviewing blogs on her post, Business Blogs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Since then, she’s reviewed the General Motors Family of Blogs.

Today we’re taking a look at Kodak’s two blogs. The A Thousand Words blog was launched in September of 2006. The other Kodak blog is the A Thousand Nerds Blog, which was launched in January of 2007.

The purpose of the A Thousand Words blog, as stated on the blog itself, is “… a place for stories from the people of Kodak.” This purpose is not to be confused with the purpose of the A Thousand Nerds blog, which is stated as being “...a place for ideas and knowledge sharing from the people of Kodak about technology.”

I expected these blogs to be graphically beautiful and full of photographs and I wasn’t disappointed. With these blogs Kodak proves that they know about photography. Kodak also shows that they are taking advantage of Web 2.0 by their presence on and use of YouTube.

BusinessandBlogging rates the Kodak blogs in the Good category. The breakdown is below.

On a scale of 1-10:

• Ease of Finding: 9 - I was able to type the words “Kodak Blog” into a search engine and the A Thousand Words blog was the first entry. The blogs are also listed on the main Kodak web page, although it’s a small link at the bottom of the site. The two blogs link to each other.

• Frequency: 7 - The A Thousands Words blog has at least one post on every business day. Many days have more than one post. That was excellent, but then I checked out the A Thousand Nerds blog, which appears to only have a new post once a week.

• Engaging Writing: 9 - The style of writing varies widely since many different Kodak employees contribute to these blogs. However, each post is extremely well-written and entertaining.

• Relevant: 9 - Both Kodak blogs are relevant to their particular audiences.

• Focused: 7 - While A Thousand Nerds stays fairly focused on the technical side of photography, the A Thousand Words covers many different topics - depending on who is writing.

• Honest: 7 - To be truthful, it was difficult to make this determination because the topics of the two blogs don’t actually discuss Kodak or Kodak products very much.

• Interactive: 8 - There is conversation and the posters do interact with the commentators. There’s also a feedback e-mail address on both blogs. In addition, Kodak has a site where customers and the general public can upload and share their own pictures.

• Responsive: 7 - Again, this was difficult to determine since these blogs aren’t directly about products and services.

We’ve also given Kodak 10 bonus points for their commitment and for their exquisite photography. (The photography was so well done that I couldn’t not mention it.)

Kodak’s blogs scored a total of 73 out of 80 possible points. Personally, I would like to see a little more of the conversation focusing on the company - where they are headed, the obstacles that they face, and customer concerns. Perhaps Kodak could accomplish this by adding a third blog to be the “voice of the company.”

For another opinion on Kodak’s blogs, read Company Blog Checkup: Kodak at The Viral Garden.

Edited to add: For more corporate blog reviews,  check out the Fortune 500 Blog Wiki.

So - let us know - how would you have rated Kodak?
And, more importantly, what lessons can you learn from Kodak’s experiences with blogging.

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POSTED IN: Corporate, Reviews