Corporate blogging? Not so fast

David Kine asks What’s Holding Back Corporate Blogging? and finds the usual answers: fear, an unwillingness to relinquish control, and so on.
That makes sense to me. Some corporations are clearly not cut out to blog in the usual sense. (It remains to be seen whether they should have internal project logs or knowledge logs, etc. – but that’s usually viewed as a different topic.)
However, no corporation that makes customers of the public can afford *not* to have a blog strategy, in the sense of paying attention to what is being said about the business’ products and services online.
You don’t have to blog, but you have to be aware of blogging and responsive to the conversation out there, simply as a matter of risk management.
Of course, the more forward-looking companies will recognize the opportunity to conduct ongoing “unfocus groups” by studying and learning from what’s being said about their work product in the public sphere.