Bronte Media

If you want to know how to write a corporate blog..

November 27th, 2007

.. go and read Spencer Rascoff’s. Spencer is the CFO/VP Marketing (a curious title into itself) of Zillow, a real estate site.

Zillow already has a corporate blog. But the company blog gets a fraction of the comments per post that Spencer’s does.

There are a few reasons why:

- He goes to his key stakeholders, not the other way around. The blog is part of ActiveRain, which is a kind of industry blog network, where, on the whole, agents talk about real estate with other agents.

- He doesn’t bullshit. On the front page of Zillow’s blog right is a history of thanksgiving and a post about riding your bike to work. Spencer is writing candidly why Zillow is not the enemy of real estate and asking for feedback as to why some agents think they are.

- He posts regularly and strips company news to their basics and makes the conversation accessible. That is, he doesn’t waft on like most corporate communications do.

Caveats:

- It should be noted that agents do get ‘points’ for commenting, which gives the Active Rain blog a greater chance of garnering more comments per post. But read the quality of them and real debate is taking place.

- Hopefully Spencer can keep up the pace. He’s only being going for a month or so. If he can keep it up, I’m switching out my Zillow blog feed subscription and just getting his take on the company via his Active Rain blog.

There mightn’t be an Active Rain for every professional industry, but I am sure there are analogs: whether it is contributing regularly in a particular forum, commenting thoughtfully and at length on other blogs etc.

3 Responses to 'If you want to know how to write a corporate blog..'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'If you want to know how to write a corporate blog..'.

  1. Spencer Rascoff said, on November 27th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

    Thanks for the kind words Niki.
    I must admit, it’s hard to keep up the pace! But i’m doing my best.

    cheers,
    spencer

  2. Bob Stewart said, on November 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    Niki,

    Since Spencer has such an interesting perspective on the Real Estate Industry we kind of held his feet to the fire when he decided to start blogging at ActiveRain. We featured his first post introducing himself so that all the members would know they can go directly to him for answers.

    The way he has engaged the agents on the site has been great…………I hope he can keep up the pace as well :)

  3. History Of Thanksgiving said, on December 26th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    […] If you want to know how to write a corporate blog.. […]