Because I’m writing my final thesis (as part of my communication studies) on corporate blogging I get to spend a lot of time reading fantastic books on the subject. The best way of explaining what blogs does for businesses are by giving examples of cases that have been either successful or unsuccessful. One text book example that I keep coming across in my reading is the success story of a once small company called Stonyfield Farm. Stonyfield Farm began as an organic farm school in New Hampshire with a total of 7 cows. Now its the world’s largest organic yogurt company with a revenue in 2005 estimated at 200 million dollars. If you join one of their farm blog "cow"munities you will still find a sense of that small company they started out as. Stonyfield’s "cow munities" offer a fun and interactive dialogue with readers and behind the scene industry news such as for example campaigns for healthier school meals. This company is a good example of how a huge corporation and well known brand use the simple and personal voice of blogs to build human relationships with their loyal and new customers. The company is also known for innovative marketing tactics such as sponsoring strong women events, because women are their primary customers and ever since the company began they have used the yogurt cup lids to spread messages they felt were important. Most of those messages have been related to saving the planet…
If you want to read more about how businesses can benefit from blogging a few good books I can recommend are; Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright, Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble, Connected Marketing by Kirby & Marsden and Blog! by Kline and Burstein.
