centre{source}

As the CEO of CentreSource, I made the decision to start our company blog. My familiarity with blogging was minimal at best and I had never actually “blogged” myself. Chris Wage, owner of Quietlife.net, presented the idea to me and suggested we do it to share what we learn with others. I thought it over and felt that a blog could be a really beneficial way for us to ’store’ what we learn for other employees to review, an easy medium to explain our services and products, and a powerful way to increase our exposure to the population at large. For these reasons, I approved the creation on CentreBlog.

Takers and Givers – Which are you

Now that we’ve been blogging for 6 months, my expectations of blogging have changed somewhat. While we use the blog to store information for ourselves, we also use the blog to ‘give back’ to the community. Our most popular posts deal with BackScatter, How to restore Normal.dot, and an analysis of ERP software. Many commmenters have thanked us for providing this information and it dawned on me that we are providing a social good by giving information back to the Internet. The blog, in essence, made it clear to me that we (up to this point) have been takers of the Internet. When we need something, we Search for it and expect the information to be there. But who provides that? That is a question that never occurred to me – it was always ’someone else’ that gave back.

When I made this small realization, the idea of the blog changed in my mind. Now, we see the blog as a way to give back to the Internet and share with others the things that we learn on a daily basis.

Blogging is Therapeutic

The blog is also very therapeutic! Business, like our daily lives, is full of frustrating and entertaining situations. When we experience these, we like to share these with others… For these, we are not so concerned with the readership of others – we are more concerned with how good it feels to provide commentary. We can forward these to those that are close to us and healthy debate may ensue.

In our personal lives, we often encounter things that are so frustrating that we really wish we were empowered to tell a large audience. Whether its terrible customer service or even something as bad as fraud, our ‘word of mouth’ power is limited to the number of people we tell. By blogging about it, we have the ability to protect others and wield a power that may correct the bad behavior. This is no different in business – we have those same experiences. By blogging about them, we not only feel better… we also provide a service to others that learn from our experience.

Company Blogs have a Business Value

Die hard business people may see a blog as a waste of time. I’ve been asked, “Does it make you money? Do you get business from it? Is it saving you anything?” To these questions, I simply say that it increases our exposure to the world – and you can’t always place a value on that. The way we use our blog is more of a tool to assist in our marketing and sales tool. When we are offering PHP Solution to a firm that is interested in .NET, we can make references to our blog articles and use those in the sales process. The same goes for a variety of other products….

We also incorporate the blog into our on-going marketing process. When we write a topic relevant to a set of customers, we’ll send a link to that blog article to them. Many of them read it, comment, and thank us for keeping them informed on such topics. We provide value, they appreciate it, and when an opportunity arises for them to choose us – we are fresh in their minds.

Its not all roses…

With any public medium, there must be controls as to what can be published. Rogue employees, controversial perspectives, and 1 voice speaking for everyone… All risks that a company assumes when starting a company blog. My opinion is that a company runs the same risk by giving employees an email address attached to the company domain. If one of my employees sends out a bad email, the customer will attribute it not only to them – but to CentreSource as well. At least on the blog it has a greater visibility to me and other employees, so action can be taken instantly.

I’ve always felt the true risk to a blog is that it shows a company’s personality & preferences. To read the CentreBlog, visitors will know that we are lovers of PHP Development, Open Source Software, and somewhat negative on Microsoft products. They’ll also see that we are very critical of bad websites, poor uses of technology in customer service, and bad businesses practices. We have to be careful to not seem cynical or biased towards one technology (unless we are).

Ultimately, the blog is a great evolution in the Internet. Its a simple way to share information – and I believe that companies should embrace this technology.