The Chicago Tribune/KRT has a good piece about corporate blogging and, of course raises the question of authenticity. (You can read it here and here.)
The story points to good reasons for corporate blogging:
Nevertheless, corporations are expected to keep on blogging, seizing the new opportunity to communicate with customers and employees in a first-person, conversational style, as well as to advance their marketing strategies.
and
“Companies are looking to be perceived as more fluid and flexible,” said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek Inc., which tracks blogs. “Those goals are often at odds with the very real protocols within companies.”
But, the real value of a coporate blog is from Michael Sexton, president of Trump University, who works with the real estate magnate:
Business blogs perform better as soapboxes than as sales or corporate communication tools, because of the doubts they engender, Sexton said. “People are increasingly skeptical about what they read on the Internet.”
Blogs are not the proper avenue for overt promotion. They will still promote a company, but it’ll be more like an educational, corp by-lined column about an important issue, trend, etc. Still, corporate blogs offer many advantages over other forms of official corporate communications:
> Gives the company a personality (whether there is one or multiple corp bloggers); makes the company seem more informal and more human.
> Allow for direct communication interaction — via comments — between corp execs and the public.
> Allow for rapid response to misinformation (why GM’s Lutz started) and rumors; also opportunity for quick communications to employees, the public and media during crisis and other times when it is needed.
> A level platform — or soapbox — no matter the size of the company. (Though, the blog’s audience reach will depend on the quality of its content and how well it is marketed.)
Of course, the KRT story raises the question of authenticity. Not surprising, B.L. Ochman was the voice for authenticity — even questioning Lutz’s blog: “I’m 1,000 percent sure the GM blog wasn’t all written by Bob Lutz.”
Ideally, blogs should be authentic: actually written by the identified blogger. If not, then I see two alternatives:
Have a group of corp execs blog. That way, it’ll relieve the burden of blogging. Yes, the pressure to maintain blog — especially once you’ve started consistently posting — can be stressful and distracting from one’s primary job responsibilities. A couple or group of bloggers for a company can relieve that pressure, and offer views from multiple apsects of the company (engineering, sales, customer service, etc.).
Ghost blog: Have a trusted, well-informed public relations professional work closely with the corp exec(s) to develop topics on which to blog about. While I’m not totally sold on this yet, I’m leaning toward ghost blogging being acceptable. That is only if there is close collaboration between the PR contact and the exec, and the exec approves posts before they are published.
For more reading on corporate and ghost blogging, see here.
Take care,
Mike
Technorati tags: corporate blogging, blogging, public relations, PR
