Jason Calanis, the head of Weblogs blog network (acquired by Netscape), sets out his vision of the corporate blog's role and importance to a business. In his inimitable style:

If you are in the Internet industry and you don't have time to blog about your product then you should quit. Go home, give up, and find another career. Your competitors are blogging about their products and talking to the market, and there is no way to compete if you don't engage the discussion. So, by not blogging you basically are giving up and telling the market that you don't care. That's the honest truth.

Blog or die!

You can't compete in the web-development space without a blog any more. Period, end of story.

[Blog or die. - The Jason Calacanis Weblog]

Not much room for subtlety in Mr. Calacanis' view. A more conservative company policy, which will probably reach mainstream companies in the next few years, is the importance of the corporate blog in a companies Public and Client Relationships.

On a most basic level, with more press release agencies going online, a blog is a good landing page for Press Releases. Two popular online press release agencies are:

• Webwire: The First Internet Press Release Distribution Resource
• PRWeb: The Original Press Release Marketing Company

Second, is the importance of giving the company a human face. Specially, if you have a strong corporate brand name, having an emotive fuzzy image can go a long way to generating a positive response. More and more important is also a companies interaction with its community of clients.

Unfortunately, a blog is not the be all and end all. May be necessary but not sufficient. A blog by itself will not generate a strong brand; you have to do that by other means. More and more brands are created through exceptional products and services.