Corporate Blogs
The blog-hype engine continues accelerating. This week, none other than BusinessWeek devotes its cover story to the metatopic. In its online version, the magazine explores the topic in even further detail - and, of course, promotes its new “blog on blogs.” There’s much that can be said about all this. But the thing that caught our eye was the case study on Stonyfield Farms and their five blogs. The QA with the CEO and chief blogger is refreshing for its frankness, especially regarding their not being able to verify that the blogs actually do anything tangible for sales or marketing (odd, then, that it wound up in a BusinessWeek cover story). But perhaps most amusing is the fact that, at least today, when you go to the site, and then go to the blogs, you can’t actually always return to the site. That is, a number of the links in the main nav, which carries through to the blog interface, don’t work once you’ve transitioned into the blogspace - including, appropriately, the “our products” link (e.g., from this page, this is what we got). Apparently, Stonyfield is really serious about not using blogs to sell yogurt. Wonder what the corporate parents at Group Danone would say? For our part, at CoFactors, we’re not sure either that there’s a quantifiable rationale for having a business blog. But we do know that it’s bad experience to have broken links - whether you want to sell yogurt or not. And that, if you haven’t checked your links lately, you might want to do so before appearing in BusinessWeek.
May 19th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Hey there-
Chris Halvorson here, Chief Blogger at Stonyfield Farm (no “s” on Farm)-
I’m amused at the tone of your post. Do you think we actually have control over when we appear in Business Week?
That issue aside, your point is well taken. We have had problems with Navigation all along-mainly because we have 5 blogs-not 1!
As to Group Danone-”corporate parents” is not quite the right term-and I’d be surprised if they’ve taken notice. We are quite autonomous.
Thanks for noticing us, though!
Best-Chris
May 19th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Thanks, Chris. We’ve removed the stray “s” and struck the reference to Group Danone. As to the tone of the post, let me just say that we have learned a lot in the last few weeks about what it takes to maintain *one* business blog — let alone 5! So, basically, we have new-found respect for your efforts. This same post, written today, might have a slightly different tone. But, in the interests of editorial purity, I have only rewritten it to address the factual issues you have kindly pointed out. The tone remains for all to see… and judge. Not too harshly, I hope, for we were (and still are) new at this. As a result of this experience, I have added this post to the “Diary.”
All that said… fix that broken link!
Thanks for your comment and great attitude.
Nick
May 23rd, 2005 at 10:20 am
Yes, we’re undertaking a general scrubbing all around the blogs, even as we speak.
Thanks for the notice.
Good luck on your blogging!