Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review: FedEx

The Fortune 500 Blog Project is a new group writing project to find and review official blogs of Fortune 500 companies. I was thinking about a company to review and just discovered that it's been claimed since I looked. Guess it's time to get in there! Hmm, who looks like fun? How about FedEx (#70)?

FedEx clearly understands how to use the web for their business. The corporate site is simply loaded with information and tools for their customers. They have everything you expect to find, and it's all easy to use. What they don't have is an official blog.

I was surprised not to find a single blog. FedEx's businesses touch every kind of business customer, and from the signature express delivery service to their FedEx Kinko's stores, they could easily run a branded advice blog for their customers. They're already writing the material, but it's scattered around the web site or in newsletters.

Hold the phone, here's a blog in fedex.com... The Player's Blog, part of a promotional site tied to the NFL. But it's not really a blog, just some first-person stories from football players. It's a nice site, very clean design and all, but it's a blog in name only.

Poking around all the places they might hide a blog or some feeds, I tried the newsroom. FedEx press releases are hosted at Business Wire, which is a good sign... Yes! An RSS feed! Besides the big corporate feed, you can look at press releases (with feeds) broken out my major business areas. Sadly, they were the only feeds I could find.

Well, this is disappointing. FedEx is a highly visible, well respected company whose businesses generate plenty of bloggable topics. The company obviously knows the benefits of e-commerce, with many, many tools and resources on their web site. Maybe they wonder about ROI—they wouldn't be alone—but I'm not suggesting opening a FedEx store in Second Life (hmmm...). It wouldn't take much of an investment for FedEx to give blogging a test, and given their strong reputation, I don't think it would present much of a risk, either.

One caveat: I explored the company's US site. It's possible they have blogs for other countries, but I thought it reasonable to assume they would try it here first.

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About Nathan Gilliatt

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  • Voracious learner and explorer. Analyst tracking technologies and markets in intelligence, analytics and social media. Advisor to buyers, sellers and investors. Writing my next book.
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