A lot of companies still wonder if they need a blog. It’s not always clear why they would want one or what they’d do with it. For my part, there are two really big reasons to have a corporate blog:

  • To make your own news and build ties with the community
  • To respond to negative/inaccurate news stories

If your company has a high enough profile to expect a hit-piece or two in the next year, you should start a blog now.

For instance, if your company’s name rhymes with Boogle, then it’s a really good idea to have a blog in case some newspaper like The Times decides to run a story about a physicist who thinks he knows how much energy a single Google search uses.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

The Times got a boilerplate response from Google, but when the story ran and made waves Google decided it needed a proper response to the story so it used its official blog to make its case:

Recently, though, others have used much higher estimates, claiming that a typical search uses “half the energy as boiling a kettle of water” and produces 7 grams of CO2. We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

In an age where you’re lucky to get a 15 second soundbite or a snappy one-sentence rejoinder, having your own blog is the ultimate soapbox. It helps when you have 518,000+ subscribers on FeedBurner, a number that puts the circulation of many newspapers to shame. If Google had not taken the time to cultivate a blog, would they have been as effective at combating the misperceptions The Times article might engender?

For those companies who are not in Google’s league (or even close) having your own blog is more luxury than necessity, but at a price hovering around “free” its main cost is the time needed to keep it up to date.

A blog can be a powerful promotional tool if used correctly. Tap into the online ecosystem in which your company operates and start making connections. If you offer something of value for free on your blog (your informed perspective, links to important resources, a forum for debate) you might just see a real-world ROI. But remember — a blog used only as a marketing vehicle is not useful to anyone else. Corporate blogs are often one step above spam blogs; if you’re gonna do it, you’d better do it right. Contact us for details.