Blogfree Companies in San Antonio

In my last post, I wondered how many companies in San Antonio have entered the blog world. I decided to see for myself.

First let me explain the process I used. Disclaimer #1: I selected the top 10 San Antonio Area Publicly Traded Companies as listed by the San Antonio Business Journal in late 2005. I did not look at more than 10 or at any private companies. Disclaimer #2: I used Google to find their web sites and checked the contact info to make sure I had the right company. Disclaimer #3: I reviewed the home page and some pages that were only one click away from the home page. I did not investigate every page. I spent about two minutes per site -- because I have a life to get on with.

Here are the companies I reviewed

• Valero Energy Corp
• AT&T (formerly SBC Communications)
• Tesoro Corporation
• Clear Channel Communications Inc
• Rush Enterprises Inc
• Harte-Hanks Inc
• Kinetic Concepts Inc
• Argonaut Group Inc
• Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc
• Alamo Group Inc

Here’s what I found

Of the top 10 San Antonio Area Publicly Traded Companies zero have blogs from the executive office or anywhere else that I could find. None provide RSS feeds. Three provide podcasts or webcasts regarding investor relations activities (Tesoro, Kinetic Concepts, Argonaut Group). And four provide some kind of listserv for email updates (AT&T, Clear Channel, Kinetic Concepts, Argonaut Group). The audience and purpose of those updates varies by company.

Clear Channel of course does offer podcasts through many of its stations, but not from its corporate office, which is probably by design. This brings me to another point. Just because “everybody” is doing it, is not a good reason to start a company blog. In fact, that’s a potentially disastrous reason. It has to be part of a larger communication or engagement strategy.