15 brilliant corporate blogs

Some firms just ‘get’ what blogging can do for business. JOSH CATONE

By Josh Catone

According to a recent report by Forrester Research that looked at 90 blogs from Fortune 500 companies, most corporate blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion”. Sadly, two-thirds hardly ever get any comments, 70% stick strictly to business topics, and worse 56% just republish press releases or already public news.

That has led many to think that corporate blogging isn’t really worth much effort, which is a shame, because properly done a corporate blog can have tremendous value. Below is a list of 15 companies that really “get” corporate blogging and produce blogs that are informative, fascinating, and a joy to read, even for people who aren’t die-hard fans of the company.

Dell – Though Dell’s corporate blog rarely strays from Dell-centric news, the company posts with a great conversational voice, often breaks news on their blog (which keeps people coming back), and listens and responds to customers. Dell also posts regularly (one or two posts per day at least) which keeps content fresh and encourages repeat visits.

Lenovo – The great collection of blogs from computer maker Lenovo demonstrates that the company really understands blogging. Lenovo intersperses posts about its product line with musings about business, design, life, and technology. Definitely don’t miss the Design Matters blog, which should be a must-read for any designer.

37signals – 37signals is kind of the poster child for corporate blogging. Its “Signal vs. Noise” blog has almost 100,000 RSS subscribers and there’s a good reason: 37signals rarely blogs about its products anymore (it split off a separate product-only blog for that), but instead shares advice and insights about business, design, editorial, and other topics.

Adobe – Adobe offers a huge collection of employee blogs, many of which are great reads. By allowing employees to blog, Adobe has empowered them to evangelise their products for them – many post tutorials, advice, reviews, and other great tit-bits promoting Adobe products – while not pigeonholing them into talking only about Adobe.

BBC – In addition to its news blogs, the BBC publishes a series of behind-the-scenes blogs. They’re tremendously interesting, especially The Editors blog, in which BBC news editorial staff dissect the broadcaster’s news coverage and the media industry in general.

Southwest Airlines – Its “Nuts About Southwest” blog doesn’t take itself too seriously – and that’s a good thing. The company blogs about itself and the airline industry with a personal touch and has been producing a series of fun, behind-the-scenes videos that are both interesting and engaging.

Sun Microsystems – Like Adobe, Sun allows its employees to blog. They’ve been doing it for a long time, and the blog portal has over 4500 bloggers covering over 110,000 posts. Some of their blogs, such as that of web 2.0 and web services evangelist Arun Gupta, have become quite popular on their own. That’s 110,000 posts of promotional gold for Sun, and it knows it.

Freshbooks – Taking a page from 37signals, the team at Freshbooks uses its corporate blog to share advice and insights into its way of doing things. Slowly, and in large part due to its blog, Freshbooks is turning users into true fans.

Marriott International – Marriott on the Move is the official blog of Marriott Hotels, Resorts, and Suites chairman and CEO Bill Marriott. Though a self-described technophobe, Marriott uses the blog to talk about his thoughts and opinions on all sorts of things related to being a hotelier. Marriott, who was recently featured on NBC nightly news for a story on corporate blogging, says he blogs because it is “a great way to communicate with [your] customers and stakeholders in this day and age”. We agree.

Seagate – Penned by Seagate Global marketing manager Pete Steege, Storage Effect is a must-read blog for anyone in the computer storage industry. Beyond first looks at upcoming Seagate products, Steege mixes it up with musings about the industry and fun posts like a recent one about Batman’s storage requirements.

General Motors – The GM Fastlane Blog is a great example of corporate blogging because GM has clearly realised that regurgitating press releases is not what blogs are made for. GM talks a lot on its blog about cars and trucks and the design choices it makes while creating them, but it also throws in interesting treatises on current hot-button issues, such as alternative energy.

Quicken Loans – Quicken Loans publishes a handful of unique blogs – unique among corporate blogs in that they’re not overly self-referential. Its What’s the Diff? blog, for example, publishes stories about “things that make the difference in business and in life.” The Quizzle blog, on the other hand, posts advice about how to understand the home loan market. It is all subtle marketing for Quicken Loans, but it is done in an informative and useful manner that will win points among customers.

FiveRuns – FiveRuns, which create products aimed at Ruby on Rails developers, also publish an excellent blog. Along with regular tutorials about how to do things with Rails and use the products, the FiveRuns team also posts weekly five question interviews with prominent members of the Rails community. Brilliant stuff.

Accenture – Consulting firm Accenture publishes eight blogs that are definitely worth checking out. Rather than just blog about what Accenture can do for your business, the company has tapped some of its smartest employees to share insights on business, communications, technology, consulting, and hiring. A sample of recent posts: how to balance work and life, thoughts about Twitter’s downtime, and musings on GTD theories.

Amazon Web Services – Amazon’s Web Services blog is truly one of the great corporate blogs because it reads like a fan blog. You’d never know that Jeff Barr, the scribe behind the AWS blog, is a web services evangelist at Amazon just by reading his posts. That’s because Barr doesn’t write like a corporate flak. Instead he writes with the voice of someone who is truly amazed each day by the stuff that people build on Amazon’s suite of web services, and that makes reading the blog a pleasure.

What other corporate blogs do you enjoy reading? Let us know in the comments.

Josh is the lead blogger for sitepoint.com. He covers all things new and exciting on the web and is based in Rhode Island, USA.  

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