Even Banks Are Getting Their Blog On
A Daniela Barbosa piece alerted me to the fact that my bank, Wells Fargo, has a nice little blogging operation going. The background design displays pencils and paper clips and calculators floating around. It talks about exploring the “new frontier” of the blogosphere, and has a bunch of Wells Fargo bloggers writing about the general topic of financing college and managing debt.
It’s kind of cute, actually. And the fact that it’s kind of cute is pretty amazing: this is a huge and potentially impersonal and frightening bank making things down right homey for us regular folk. I really like that the bloggers mix some personal stuff in, and aren’t just regurgitating corporate brochures about FAFSA and college loans. This entry, by Staci Schiller, writes about a trip to New York City for the BlogHer Business ‘07 conference, and chit chats about the bright lights and Madison Square Gardens of the big city. The fist comment: “hello, I need a student loan and information” kind of makes the whole thing sort of hilarious and compelling.
The point, if there’s one to be made here, is that all companies – particularly customer-facing ones – would be well served to blog. There’s simply no better way to put a human face (or faces) on a corporate entity. Blogging and the business world are similar in that it’s a grind it out, attract and hold one loyal customer at a time kind of operation. If people can relate to and feel comfortable with and eventually trust an information source that just happens to be associated with a particular business (and there’s the trick: the blogger has to be interesting and compelling and relatively transparent, all while representing something of an online outpost for a business) there’s every chance that they will make a purchase or select a service from that business.
Start-up founders are ideal bloggers because they’re able to share their enthusiasm and entrepreneurial spirit while guiding readers through the crazy ups and downs of launching a new venture. Eric at the MyBlogLog Blog and Topix CEO Rich Skrenta’s Skrentablog are fun examples.
