My day job has me in Portland, starting tomorrow, for a major conference for law librarians. It’s another chance for me and my colleagues to use our corporate blog to cover the events from our company’s perspective. This will be our third effort in this. All, in 2008.
We take photos. We do video and text interviews with attendees, media, bloggers and of course our company leaders and employees. We try to turn all that around as fast as we can but it’s different than if I was a law librarian out there on my own.
Yes, that’s right. The dreaded corporate approval process. Fortunately, my boss is on site with me and another colleague and is able to look our posts over soon after we write them or I edit the video/audio to accompany them.
Despite a few delays from interview to editing to posting… blogging from a conference is a great tool for businesses to be involved in. It takes some planning ahead of time to line up some of the interviews and map out a posting schedule. But the best part is that it allows corporate communicators to be reporters.
Who better to tell your company’s story from an event? You control the message. You provide a forum to the Web for the people you interview that they appreciate.
I’m so glad my day job allows me to do it. It makes perfect business sense for today’s social media landscape. Businesses that haven’t realized this yet are behind the curve. Even the most conservative business has much to gain by getting into corporate blogging. Sure, you make mistakes.
But you learn by doing. I’ve always believed that.
For those of you who have done some corporate blogging from a conference, and I realize the list is short but growing, what have you had success with? Any pitfalls you’ve run into?
