Corporate Blogging

In class this week we talked about the idea of corporate blogging and how it can be a great way to inform customers on products, and also a way for CEO hot heads to lose their cool and blow their credibility. As I began searching for corporate blogs on the Internet I found that it was rather scarce to actually find one. In our textbook The New Influencers, it is stated that only 10% of all corporations have blogs. But why wouldn’t these corporations want to communicate better with their customers or employees? Take for example Clear Channel, who is the biggest radio corporation, they have no blog.

As of late Clear Channel has had a lot to talk about too. They have officially made the company private. It has been sold to investors and there is now no more public stock. They have also been adamant on stopping the Sirius/XM Satellite merger and it’s estimated that they spent over half a million dollars on lobbyists trying to stop the merger. My father has been a Clear Channel employee for over 10 years and could benefit from a blog. First of all, he had no idea that they had such distaste for the Satellite merger and up until recently had not received details on the reason for the hold on the company going from public to private. It is now officially private and he had been waiting for it to go through so he could sell his stock. Even though some of these issues are private at least a blog would help inform Clear Channel's employees and create a forum for discussing information about the company. Personally I think corporations fear this level of communication and aren't interested in pleasing anyone except their pocket books. Of course they would get a lot of negative comments on their blog since they are definitely one of the most hated corporations in America and it might be hard to manage it in a constructive way.