Should your business blog just be another section on your existing corporate site? Some of the pioneers of business blogging, including General Motors, have separate URLs and separate designs for their blogs - GM’s is at http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/.

Boeing host their Flight Test Journal as part of their main site, but it distinctly looks like a blog, rather than just another corporate webpage.

There is a lot to be said for the separate approach. A blog is meant to reveal a more informal, human face of your corporate personality. You should have a place on the web where you do your formal stuff, and another place where you relax a little. It seems to me that many of the blogs that are just folded into parent sites are slightly token efforts. The writers are less likely to let their corporate hair down. Visitors might not even realise that they have stumbled across a blog.

Smaller companies might think it’s overkill take out a new URL, but they might have a sub-domain for their blog - something like www.blog.companyname.com. If I was starting our own site from scratch, that’s what I would do. Our main pages are where we try to sell ourselves to you a bit. The blog is where we provide a free service that will endear you too us.. Well that’s the idea, anyway.