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To Blog or Not to Blog?
1to1 Media’s Senior Editor Kevin Zimmerman wrote yesterday in his blog about his interview with Paul Gillin, who recently authored the book “The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media.”
Gillin says that many companies aren’t committed to their blogs, and don't devote the time and resources to managing it. Others start their blogs without a well-thought plan and as a result their blogs eventually die.
At the Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange this week, I found that many executives struggle with this same issue of how to leverage blogs. Some even are challenged with how to get started, and if they will provide value for their companies.
A brief list of the challenges I overheard include: how to handle negative content, developing a response strategy, who writes it, bandwidth to manage the blog, what metrics to use to measure it, the complexity, maintaining consistency across channels, how to write for corporate blogs, how to morph forums with blogs, how to calculate ROI, and awareness of legal and compliance issues.
While some executives grappled with these issues at the conference, others spoke about their successes. David Doucette, director of Internet strategy at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, said that the hotel chain features a blog “written” by their lobby dogs. The blogs tell the Fairmont stories and gives guests opportunities to tell their experiences. Guests actually bond with the dogs and even call the hotels to inquire about how they’re doing.
Grier Graham, vice president of sales and marketing at TechDirt, a corporate intelligence provider, told me that even though the company has a couple hundred customers, the blog receives 100,000 page hits every day. As a result, the company uses the viral nature of the blog as a marketing tool and major news outlets have linked to the blog recently.
And Rick Short, marcom director for Indium Corporation, a provider of thermal interface materials, said the company’s blog is used as a competitive differentiator. Commmunities of customers like semi-conductor communities and liquid flux communities, have formed as a result. “We’ve been blogging for three years and not a single competitor has tried to enter the space,” Short said.
My belief is that blogs provide a way for companies to engage with customers, they offer new marketing channels, and they offer a avenue for customers’ voices to be heard. It’s up to individual companies to leverage that valuable customer insight and marketing potential.
TechDirt, Fairmont, and Indium are three very different companies in varying industries and all have found success with blogs. If you’re one of those companies spending time debating the value in blogs rather than assembling a team to develop the initial research and plans for one, your competitors are probably out there engaging with your customers through their blogs as we speak.
Mila, you said to me: "The questions you raise are up to the individual companies to decide, but in my personal opinion, marketing owning blogs are a good thing."
Well yes, they are. What I hoped was we would get some of them showing us how they decided.
What rules have been placed around the oxymoron of the corporate blog to ensure that it is fresh, challenging, and not damaging?
Tim,
I heard someone say at the Frost & Sullivan show that corporate blogs are oxymorons. I thought that was a great analogy given the unscripted intent of blogs.
The questions you raise are up to the individual companies to decide, but in my personal opinion, marketing owning blogs are a good thing.
My advice is to start with an internal blogs while developing your external blogging strategy. This will allow employees to feel comfortable contributing, to develop blog topics, and to cultivate your organization’s voice.
That's great Jeff. So your blog is actually humanizing your company internally with employees and externally with customers.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for participating in the seminar. Great posting.
Great article. We started a blog on our website about a year ago and it has been amazing what it has accomplished for us. We allow everyone at the company to post, which gives outsiders a good perspective on who we are and also lets potential new employees get a feel for our culture. There's also a sense of empowerment one gets when they can express themselves openly, which isn't always possible at work. It's been a great success for us so far.
The most challenging part of a blog is that bland is bad. Yet controversial, while newsworthy, can create considerable adverse publicity, perhaps even actionable items.
Yet having "corporate affairs" check every blog entry before it's posted puts undue delays into the posts, missing newsworthy items.
Large corporations are not generally used to allowing the significant freedom expected of a blog.
So how does the marketing department approach this? How ought it to? Ought it to be within marketing at all?