The Rise of Corporate Blogging and Connecting With the Groundswell

“You can’t force executives to blog – hence the eight months of waffling. You can take someone who wants to blog and build a strategy around him”

(p. 222, Groundswell)

Reading the chapter 11 of the Groundswell, I’ve found out a range of strong points on how to connect with the groundswell properly by means of blogging.  But it’s not “just a blogging”, it’s a very well-judged blogging strategy that must be involved in developing continually.

There are so many examples of outstanding corporate blogging on the Internet!  The best corporate blogs in this world are belong to Google, Disney, LinkedIn, Dell, BBC, Flickr etc. The Official Google Blog is phenomenal, it collects the insights from all over the company. If we take a look at a person who is keeping the Official Google Blog, we’ll not find a specific individual who is responsible for the content. An incredible activity comes from bloggers from all areas of the Google Company (“very diverse crowd”):

Eventually, this corporate blogging strategy (since April 2004) brings true success and the feedback represented by 13,173,202 subscribers (including me).

So, I’ve decided to choose something less expected to be written about such as a Bigelow Tea Blog (this blog was included in that “successful list” too).

‘The effective corporate blog has one central goal - to connect with the target audience's interests, needs and pain points"

 Paul Salvaggio, 

director of marketing services and technology for Backbone Media

Well, let’s analyze Bigelow Tea blogging success. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s a really effective blog. What is more interesting for me is to learn how the Bigelow Tea Blog has found a way to be in “Top 40 Successful Corporate Blogs”.

First of all, authors of the Groundswell suggest to start small. Indeed, if we take a look at the previous posts, they can amaze with their unobtrusiveness. We can observe that a very rich content of the Bigelow Tea Blog has been creating and “growing up” for years. Currently, the blog is divided into categories:

 

The content comprises 8 categories and 19 subcategories that can be evaluated as a meticulous work.  A reader may enjoy a great variety of topics. And I’m sure that this blog has the loyal but silent readers.

Get the right people to run your strategy

So, there is no need to “pick the person who has the most passion about starting a relationship with your customers”. Cindi Bigelow, who is the 3^rd generation President & CEO of family-owned Bigelow Tea, is one of the most passionate professionals in this company. She is promoting the Bigelow Tea company by means of new media channels (especially social media) to prove Bigelow Tea “is accessible everywhere, 24/7”.

 

Plan for the next step and for the long term

As I’ve already mentioned, the blog has many tea themes to write about. I would like to add that the blog is updating with a noticeable frequency. For instance, during October 2015 Cindi Bigelow created 9 posts! What an inexhaustible source of inspiration!

One more observation

According to the comment policy, we cannot just leave the comment. It will be moderated, and it cannot be guaranteed that our comment will be published. And if we have any customer service issues, we shouldn’t talk about them right here.  Well, it looks like a good explanation why we don’t see a hot discussion below the post. 

Cindi prefers to collect the customers’ comments or pictures from the rest social media and to share them on the corporate blog. All in all, she is listening to, talking to, energizing, supporting and embracing the groundswell and following her own strategy. 

What do you think about the Tea Blogging (if there is the end of ideas or no)?