Why do companies blog? I’m beginning to question whether they do it for ego reasons, or whether there is a legitimate corporate purpose in posting news and opinions week on week.

Is blogging perhaps a modern-day emperor dressed in what he thinks is savvy social-media garb, when really it’s a transparent excuse to swagger through the blogosphere and parade his presumptions?

OK, so I’m aware of the supposed benefits of clothing my company’s communications with pithy, insightful nuggets of information and opinion every week:

• Providing fresh content helps with the search engine optimisation of my website. I Google my name, and a link to my latest blog post appears on the first page, second only to my LinkedIn profile.
• Blogging on issues close to my heart, and where I share my expertise and experience, can make me a ‘thought leader’ in my field.
• Blogging can humanise the company and its profile – in theory giving potential clients a better feel for whether we’re the kind of people they’d like to do business with.
• It opens the doors to feedback and interaction with customers and stakeholders.
• If we blog consistently, rather than intermittently, it creates a subliminal suggestion that we are a company to be relied on and trusted.

Those benefits feel rather lofty to me. And, on top of blogging, there’s the rest of the social media landscape for the emperor to engage with: tweets, retweets, mentions and thank-yous on Twitter; LinkedIn groups to interact with; and Facebook status updates to respond to.

It makes me wonder what we did before blogging and social networking came along? Are we kidding ourselves filling up blog space every week with stuff that people don’t read and don’t care about? Is it commercially viable, or is our time better spent doing something else? Most importantly, are current clients, and potential new ones, more likely to do business with us?

I’d love to hear from you if you are reading and engaging with this blog. What do you think? And what do you want from a corporate blog like this?

Is Emperor Blog egotistically in the all-together, or does he have a finely stitched, eloquently worded, business-building purpose?

Answers on the bottom of this blog post, please.