An important source of information to most corporate real estate groups for new tips, trends and tools are the corporate blogs of the big service providers and technology companies in the industry. There are numerous versions of these (some service providers even have more than one based on their internal silos!). But one thing is true, you get more from reading between the lines, usually, than from the posts themselves.
Most company run blogs fall into one of three categories:
- Direct sales – the information you get is tantalizing but never quite gives you a solution all while pointing you toward that company’s offerings for the solution.
- Indirect sales – the posts pose open-ended questions or highlight industry trends that get a reader thinking in a certain direction with the goal of having that reader reach out for more information.
- Industry expert – posts are geared toward educating readers on how to solve problems without necessarily buying a solution from the company posting.
One of the great things about online posts is that the reader completely controls their use of the information. The company posting it rarely even knows who is reading the information. A reader can take the information and do with it as they will. That reader can reach out, ignore it, send it to a colleague, save it for later, or simply absorb and move on.
However, sometimes reading between the lines of posts can give you even more insight than intended. For example, last year the number of posts focusing on FASB skyrocketed before dropping off. Now those posts are starting to make a return. Reading between the lines, the service providers were ahead of their corporate clients in getting ready for FASB so their posts weren’t aligning with sales so they reduced attention on the topic. Now it’s coming back because corporate clients are finally pushing to get the support on the topic now that they are ready.
Similarly, organizational changes in operations, organization and/or strategy can change the nature of posts. New teams will often start emphasizing new language. New operations will focus on organizing topics in a different way. A new strategy will change the underlying style and tone of posts. Combining everything together can give you a sense of what is going on inside the closed in walls of a company.
Information moves like the waves in the ocean – peaks to troughs to peaks. What is old becomes new again. Clues as to direction and intention are always there if you take the time to look.