Traditional vs. New Media Opportunities – Balancing Risk & Opportunity

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) & Cisco Systems Inc.
Moderated by Marketwire
Tuesday, June 11 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Blogging: Friend or Foe
58 of Fortune 500 companies have a blog. The number of corporate blogs has doubled in the last year. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems, released earnings through their blog before the wire last year. Dell has a corporate blog as well: Direct2Dell, where information on products, services, and customers is shared. Marketwire conducted a survey last year on blogs in which 26% of respondents strongly supported it, 34% strongly apposed, and 37% had no comment. Whether you realize it or not, people are talking about your company online. It is recommended companies monitor third-party blogs.

At AMD the VP of Technology blogs, the legal department monitors, and a disclosure agreement is present on the blog. The company does not allow external people to interact on the blog, instead an email is sent to the moderator. AMD’s new CMO, formerly from Sun Microsystems, is pushing AMD’s blog and the communications department is heavily involved. The company finds there are less rumors in chat arenas and more discussion on the blog. Ruth mentioned the importance of having a policy in place outlining the roles of the communication and legal departments and illustrating whom is responsible for dealing with the information.

Cisco has been blogging for about three years. The company started an internal blog and then extended it to a corporate blog. The advantages of an internal blog are: employee interaction, the sharing of relevant topics, and the ability to gather intelligence and expertise from across their employee base. An external advantage is that they drive communications to the public on events, company details, news, and so forth. Cisco encourages bloggers to post twice a week to build a stronger community and to link to third-party bloggers to back up their point. Bloggers go through an optimization process to be trained and must disclose personal identity. The CEO is talking from top of mind, as there are no ghostwriters.
More…
AMD provides 5 to 15 minute presentations on YouTube that summarize the strategies and goals of the company with a note from the CEO. In the past, AMD has tagged press releases on the wire.

Cisco uses video blogging as it is more interactive. They too use YouTube, as well as Facebook and Second Life, and are currently looking into Twitter. Cisco is focused on providing an interactive website which is currently providing an educational series to investors called “investor relations tech talks”.

YouTube is the third largest search engine. If you are not using it you are missing out!