IBM to launch largest corporate blogging initiative ever

From Tom Forensky, publisher of the SiliconValleyWatcher, early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company. “The goal is to help improve IBM’s competitive position in key IT markets by having more of its tech gurus participating in online communities and discussions.”

IBM is taking the blogging program seriously. It’s being run by Jim Finn, the former chief of communications at Oracle and now number two in the corporate communications team at IBM. Employees will be taught what blogging is, and they will be guided on what is appropriate blogging content.

Sounds like IBM gets the concept of blogging too. Finn told SiliconValleyWatcher “We’ve got a lot of experts in their fields and we want to encourage them to become involved in blogging and online discussions.” IBM’s chief strategist, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, credited with persuading IBM to become an early advocate for Linux and cultivating relationships with the open-source developer community will be one of IBM’s early bloggers.

LexBlog tip: As the SilconValleyWatcher said “This type of evangelism through blogging can be extremely effective and potentially reduce advertising and marketing costs—a very large line item for most companies.” This goes for law firms too.

Source of post: Micro Persuasion