Tuesday April 19, 2005

Blogs as Internal Marketing

Recently Coté blogged in response to my posting about the benefits of blogging. His posting was great. I sometimes say something and then someone else's reply will articulate in the perfect way what I meant but couldn't quite put into words. Coté hit the nail on the head. He said “ blogs are a supra-effective tool for internal marketing. And if you don't think that's important, you must work for the perfect company.”

Also in his posting Coté said that Brandon said, “The number of people who read a weblog matters much less than who reads a weblog.”. That is SO true. When I write for my blog I really try to think about who I am talking to. I know that one big segment of those who may read what I write is Sun internal people. I know that my blog is one effective way to engage support and resistance for, and to identify issues with a change for which we are trying to build acceptance. I do think my blog helped at least a little bit to build support and understanding for our recent transition of Sun from CDE to JDS.

Reading some of the links in Coté's posting I found his excellent summary of the issues with blogs that are for company internal use only. I've thought about doing an internal blog. Our CIO has one. It would mean I could discuss a few things I can't discuss here, but I like the broader audience for Blogs dot Sun dot Com and I don't have time for two blogs. Plus I like to focus on doing the best job I can here.

The other point that Coté makes is about how to advertise blogs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of Sun people who read Sun blogs. I bet it is less than 10%. There is a sizable population of people who, for lots of good reasons, will just never read blogs. When it comes to ways to increase readership it may just be that growth needs to be organic and word of mouth works best.