BUZZ NEWS

Check out WAL * MART

The retail giant Wal-Mart is now on the webpage of the New York Times for its external corporate blog called "Check Out" (checkoutblog.com), a blog co-authored by a handful of buyer-bloggers recruited from within its 1.2 million workers!

Nowadays, corporate blogs are not new additions to the blogosphere. Companies are using blogs more and more to communicate with clients and customers. According to a recent study, 54 (10.8%) of the Fortune 500 companies are blogging... (as of 2/24/08).

Interestingly enough, the Wal-Mart blog does not follow the traditional model of corporate blogging. A first difference was the choice to have in-store product buyers as bloggers instead of executives. Most importantly, Wal-Mart is encouraging these bloggers to freely express their opinions in their posts.

After one unsuccessful blog shut down several years ago, Wal-Mart has learned: “create an authentic blog or don’t create a blog at all”, the thing is, an authentic blog has to be unbiased and free of corporate censorship and review.

As a result, the bloggers spend most of their time comparing and evaluating the goods Wal-Mart sells as well as sharing their opinions of these (many of them are negative and/or dismissive). Fortunately, no problems have risen from any of the posts so far.

In summary, external corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, readers can generally tell though if people are being genuine. The unfiltered blog by Wal-Mart presents an excellent solution that could be the next trend setter within the world of corporate blogging.