Here we are, time to launch our fourth day on the IAOC blog, you have some times to leave comments while we are going to sleep in our old Europe...

Meet you here tomorrow to discuss the following topics: do European corporations view internal blogs as a way to make employees more effective or as a waste of time, are internal blogs in multi-national companies being written in English or in the local language.

I am everything but comfortable with BlogHarbor, even with screenshot sent by Steeve I can't change my previous post, so I have to post a new note with additional informations (Sorry Steeve and Don, I haven't been able to make it, a shame...) ;o)

In fact I'd like to react on Octavio's post when he talks about the Nokia story... I was not far from forgeting this case study and that would really have been a shame (again)... More over, the Nokia story might be the Nokia -Siemens story...

What happened... One week after the other, Nokia & Siemens both launched a communication program using blogger and blogs. "Bloggers" for Nokia as they've been offering a Nokia 7710 to about 20 french bloggers ( I am taking about France here, but the overall program was on 1800 people around the world....people, not bloggers) expecting from them to blog about the mobile phone they received, while "blog" for Siemens, who quite at the same time, has been hiring 15 bloggers to test the SK 65 BlackBerry phone and share their thoughts on a dedicated blog for the time of the campaign. In both cases, we've been given (ooops, forgot to say, I am one of the rare lucky frenchy to have participate in both campaign...) the phone which might be seen as a "income" but of course it didn't affected our posts as we've been saying the good and the bad about both products...

What I found very interesting in both those experience as PR blogger, is that following some thoughts about the death of  PR or about DIY PR thanks or because of blogs,  2 big brands have been using blogs as PR tools... And this has been a famous idea, as from my point of view, blogs are not the end of PR but an important evolution in the way PR folks have to think about communicating information.

In Spain, there are some companies that are seeing blogs as new media and bloggers as new analysts and as an emerging class of opinion leaders.

Nokia distributed his model 7710 to some of the most important bloggers with an "Open Blogging Policy" - bloggers can write whatever and whenever they want about the mobile.  The impact in the blogosphere was important, causing a "conversation" with hundreds of comments and posts.

Nokia is commited with the blogosphere since it has invested in advertising in Xataka, the most important gadget blog in Spanish.

Editorial Planeta is trying to reach important bloggers to post comment about their books.  It seems that this strategy was original, but it is not working as good as Nokia's.

Maybe because books are not a "hot" issue for Spanish bloggers, or at least not as relevant and important as a state-of-the-art mobile telephone.

SME's are using blogs following different strategies:

- Isoco, a software and internet solutions company, uses blogs as intranet to share knowledge about the industry.  IT department is in charge of updating the blogs.

- kiu, a local advertising and PR company, uses its blog to promote their own clients.   Its blog is kind of a online press center.

Blogs are gaining in importance rapidly in both big and SMEs, but still are on their way to be considered as serious new media or as a communication tool for most cautious and traditional companies (who are the vast majority).

But, as we "evangelists" bloggers say in Spain...

Todo llégará... Time will come...