Corporate blogging is basically a conversation with your customers. It is an informal dialogue and portrays how an organisation thinks. It's a way to engage your customers and talk about your product or services. In the ClearTrip blog, we talk about product, design, technology and our project team's work but product talk only constitutes 20-30 per cent of our blog. I think a corporate blog is not exactly a tool for corporate communication, as blog is a two-way dialogue and not a one-way communication.

In an era when there are consumer review-driven sites like Mouthshut.com, a consumer will find ways to voice his opinion about your product or service. So you cannot escape negative opinion. In such a scenario, if an organisation believes in openness and transparency, then corporate blogging is for them. Like, we never delete negative comments and complaints from our blog, because we believe in transparency.

The process of corporate blogging is moving slow among organisations in India as well as in the US. I think organisations will take 18 to 34 months to understand what blogs can do for them. The slow process of adoption of blogging lies in the traditional nature of companies and their customer focus. There is a mindset issue with the companies and many still don't believe in free flow of information. Also, companies don't know what they want out of blogging. As they learn more about it, corporate blogs will grow. I see separate departments having their own blog and separate blogs for specific products too.

Corporate blogging is a fairly new concept in India and the utility attached to it from an organisation’s point of view is the same in India as in any part of the world. It gives the organisation a human face and helps in building relationships. There are various uses of a corporate blog – you can get feedback from your customers, communicate with employees, engage prospective employees and provide information to media. Also, it can be used for clearing miscommunication and finding supporters during a crisis. The corporate blog is very much a tool of corporate communication -- provided the organisation is open to share information, accept feedback and is ready to change. A corporate blog is like communication without adulteration.

In India, corporate blogging still has a long way to go. Organisations have started recognising the importance of blogging and they are tracking the blogs which talk about them, but the adoption trend is faster among entrepreneurs. The culture in organisations seems to be a hindrance in adoption of blogging as a mainstream activity and communication is still more or less a one-way activity. However, blogging just for the sake of it will not solve any purpose and it should be done to achieve a specific objective. Corporate blogging in the US is a mainstream activity now, and this can be attributed to the ‘open culture’ of organisations there, as they are ready to share and interact with people. I think corporate blogging,will become an important and relevant activity in the coming two years as there will be a rise in internet traffic and blogging will get integrated with mobile.