MTV: To blog or not to blog

Since this is just my second post I just hope that I make some sense here :).

It's been over a couple of weeks now since I started blogging and since then I've talked, listened and read about a lot on blogging and podcasting and all the other possible apps that social media have brought about these days. I seems to me that this business is booming.

Seeing my subject of research for the moment is corporate internal communication and the use of social media within this area I've come to the conclusion that for the moment there's one question that pops out: To blog or not to blog?

It just seems so interesting to me that some companies (and some of these companies are normally the trendsetting companies mind you) haven't picked up the whole buzz around social media yet.

Take MTV Networks for instance. (I'm taking this corporation as an example seeing I've done my internship there).
Now here's a company that has been on the market for over 20 years now and has had the reputation of setting trends for younger generations since the beginning. What I did notice during my internship there, was that they (the Benelux department that is) were struggling to get more visitors and hits on their website. But nothing really seemed to work.
I sat down with Bert van Wassenhove (One Agency and has worked on projects for MTV Networks) two days ago and I brought it up during our conversation. I asked him wether he thought blogging would help this company in getting more visitors and attention. He told me he was more than certain this would help the company gaining more visibility and hits on their website. But that a company like MTV was a company bound to tradition and that this was probably why they didn't apply blogging (especially internally) yet.
Now this did get me wondering. Why would a company that has a reputation of setting trends towards a younger generation not want to promote blogging. Like Shel Israel states it: kids these days are the online generation. They will pick up on you if you promote and manage to profile (can't find a better word for now) yourself in the online community.

It struck me as well that the Benelux department of MTV Networks was still using something that looked to me as a very old and poorly maintained intranet site with several dead links. Internal communication happened via e-mail which is of course ok if it concerns important matters and subjects but not if it's about someone's car which is still in the parking lot with its lights on...For this you have Twitter now (oh yes I've found my way to this new wonderful gizmo as well) You promote Twitter on the work floor, it doesn't need that much explanation and boom you're workfloor is IM'ing each other via Twitter and their mailboxes only get flooded with notices of the fact that they've been tweeted to (hey, you're battery's gonna be dead if you don't turn off your lights!!)

Trendsetting companies, companies where youngsters look to these days should, in my opinion, promote the use of all kinds of social media at both an internal as well as the external level. From CEO blogs and Twitter use to the employees that blog about the company itself or who blog so they can cooperate more easily with each other.

Introduction

I'm rather new to the entire blogosphere but I'm hoping that by launching my own blog I can gain valuable insights on this topic.
I am writing my thesis about the role of blogs and podcasts in an organisations internal communication structure. So far I can only be positive on the effect these communication channels have on for example a corporate culture.
I'm hoping to share my visions and opinions with all of you in the near future on why organisations should be using these channels as a way to communicate with employees and other actors.

Also I will be blogging about business communication in general seeing this is a particular area of interest to me. I'm looking forward to discussing and reading all about this topic with you.

Thank you

Michael Heering