Final Blog

After creating and updating a blog for several weeks, we feel that the four main advantages of blogs are as follows: they are easy to create, easy to maintain, allow for interaction with customer base, and in most cases blogs are free. Perhaps, the biggest advantage of maintaining a blog is that there is no need to be extremely tech savvy when starting or posting on a blog. Maintaining a blog is also extremely easy and convenient, with the ability to update your blog from anywhere in the world.

There are some challenges involved with maintaining a blog, especially from a corporate point of view. Some of the challenges include: regulations to be considered, disclosure concerns, and employee and shareholder's perceptions. From a corporate standpoint, if you fail to update and properly maintain your site, it could turn into a free for all bashing session on the company, not helping the overall image. This is in close relation to the merits of others commenting on blog posts. Some people have no shame, and use blogs as their stress reliever and become angered and vent about anything. Some people need to realize that this is not the purpose of blogs, especially in a professional corporate setting.

Corporate blogs were created to be used as a beneficial tool for both the company and customer alike. The blogs should be used as an interactive tool, providing convenient measures for the customer to communicate with the company and vice versa. If you as a customer have qualms with a certain company, it can and should be handled in professional demeanor. In response to demeaning posts, the company runs the risk of an ill-advised comment being posted by someone with in the company, which eventually is exploited by the media or a disgruntled investor.

With web 2.0 applications becoming such a commonplace in today's world, we advise and think it is important for companies to have blogs, but feel that it is just as important to properly maintain and update the blog to ensure the sites overall integrity.