The Power of A Blog

Why are blogs such a powerful communications tool in the arsenal of a company? There are lots of reasons, really. But the explanation I’ve used that normally gives those who don’t quite understand blogging have their “ah-ha” moment is a simple one. To understand the power of a blog you have to compare it to something familiar.

Think about your company newsletter. If you’re not that hip to blogging yet, your company newsletter is probably still printed and circulated in everyone’s box in the mailroom. Or maybe it’s mailed to everyone’s house. But in some form or fashion, some printed piece of information is circulated monthly or bi-weekly to everyone in the company. There are pictures of new hires, company softball team news, maybe even some tips and tricks articles for the sales team and a list of birthdays.

The problem with that mechanism of communication is that the information has a limited life cycle and, due to costs, the publication has a limited circulation. Only a few people can access it.

With a blog, even if just focused on internal news, everyone, in or out of the company, can access it. There’s less hard cost to produce and adding news or information doesn’t add cost to the project. And the information can be updated on a whim, giving it a forever life cycle. Not to mention, the content can be more easily found thanks to the ubiquitous power of search.

Those reasons alone make a blog a much more powerful communications mechanism — internally or externally — than a company newsletter.

Capitalizing on that same analogy, though, think about how many company newsletters you’ve read that were interesting enough to want to read again.

It’s a comparable medium, but not the same. With more power, comes more responsibility.

It’s time companies grasped that and made their new newsletter, in whatever form, worth reading.

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