On 29th August 2019, the first Corporate Blog Barcamp took place in Germany. At the DJH in Dortmund, communicators, bloggers and content marketers met to hold workshops and to exchange ideas on the topic corporate blog.
The Organizers
The Corporate Blog Barcamp was organized by Daniela Sprung of Bloggerabc, communications consultant Meike Leopold and Gesa Hauschild, Bloggerin at DJH Blogs.
At this point, I just have to say thank you for an all-round successful organization. That’s what they usually say but first of all the location was really great, with 5 to 6 spacious rooms that really offered enough space for the sessions and a very modern ambiance at the DJH. But more important than the ambiance and the catering is, of course, to manage efficiently through the session schedule. And the organizers did that professionally throughout the whole day.
The Participants
A Barcamp lives from its participants because (almost) nothing is prepared and everyone can bring in topics for an own session. Since the Corporate Blog Barcamp took place for the first time, I was very excited about which participants would be there and which topics would be found in the sessions.
Many of the participants are professionally in charge of corporate blogs – which is not surprising at this point. Editors, copywriters, and bloggers from corporate communications were strongly represented. This is certainly also due to the organizers’ filter bubble. And even the one or other familiar face was there. So that there was a colorful mixture of museum blogs, travel blogs and large theme portals.
If you want to find out more about the participants, the best way is to search for the hashtag #cbb19 on Twitter, where many reported live from the sessions.
The Sessions
The Sessions of a Barcamp are the Barcamp. Everyone had, after the personal introduction round, the possibility to propose their own session. If enough participants found the topic exciting, it was put on the session board.
Of course, the sessions focused on the topic of corporate blog. Some of the central questions discussed were:
- What is a Corporate Blog in 2019 and where does the journey go?
- How do you run a corporate blog “just on the side”?
- How do you find the balancing act between corporate communication and marketing in a blog?
On these issues, many participants found that in their role as communicators within the company, they are in a position which is subject to disruption. Corporate communications, marketing, content marketing, HR marketing, inbound strategies, sales, and political communications – all these and more disciplines claim the corporate blog and communications. How should one deal with this? What does this mean for one’s own editorial work and how can one break silos in order to create a collaborative and cross-departmental working environment in the company? These are questions that even a session at a Barcamp cannot answer conclusively. But the exchange with like-minded people and the experience that many companies have the same challenges was a great aha moment for many participants.
There were also sessions that took place in the extended field topics of corporate blogs and offered very exciting insights. For example, how to find more traffic through search engine optimization using the Google Search Console and whether Facebook is dead.
yummytravel.com
shows participants live how to increase their traffic with the Google Search Console.
My Conclusion
The Corporate Blog Barcamp 2019 was a successful start for the organizers and I really hope that the Barcamp will be repeated. For the future, I would like more participants to find their way to the event and also marketing people, personnel marketers and social media managers to feel addressed by the Barcamp. Because the subject of corporate blogs is an intersection topic that affects everyone who communicates in companies. So, we have to talk about it together. Preferably 2020, on the next Corporate Blog Barcamp.
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