Good corporate blogging model?

Wal-Mart has been trying to engage its customers through blogging. Its early attempts with PR firm Edelman were disastrous but it looks like Wal-Mart has learned from the mistake and is now getting it right by, as Ali G would say, keeping it real. Street Creds. That’s the name of the game.

Would other corporations be game enough to try something like this out?

clipped from www.iht.com

Wal-Mart unleashes employees in blogs

Corporate blogs are nothing new – General Motors, Dell and Boeing have them – but Wal-Mart’s site, called Check Out, at checkoutblog.com, turns the traditional model on its head. Instead of relying on polished high-level executives, it is written by little-known buyers, largely without editing.

The result is an intensely personal window into the lives, preferences and quirks of the powerful taste makers at Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. retailer, who have spent years shielded from public view.

Their decisions about what makes it onto Wal-Mart’s shelves have enormous effect, earning or costing vendors millions of dollars. It was a blogger on Check Out, after all, who first reported last month that Wal-Mart would stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format, rather than the rival HD DVD system. The decision was considered the death knell for HD DVD.

One response to “Good corporate blogging model?”

Scott Thong

March 6, 2008 at 9:42 am

Would you please post this for the benefit of your readers who will be voting for the first time this 2008?

How do you vote? A Pictorial Guide for First-timers.

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