Agenda of the Corporate Blog
I got into a debate with a client recently about their corporate blog.
The client contact meritoriously defended the idea that folks who visit the corporate blog “expect to read stuff about the company.”
He isn’t wrong. Any corporate blog certainly ought to contain a hefty dose of news, information and analysis by and about the company. But does that need to be the end-all, be-all of the corporate blog? After all, it’s a blog, not a newsletter.
Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester posted on this same topic this week. He succinctly noted that a “horrible” corporate blog, “exclusively talks about the company.”
(Jeremiah made a lot of other great points, too. If the subject of “corporate blogging” is of interest to you, I’ll admit right now that you’d be even better served by hopping over to his blog immediately!)
A corporate blog is intended to highlight the human side of the company.
Humans have varied interests. When something goes wrong, they want to talk about it. If one of their competitors does something brilliant, they might want to whine about it — and exhort their corporate peers to greater heights. If an industry issue is nagging at them, they want to work through it. Yea — even in public. It’s the transparency, the humanity — the willingness to jump off the deep end every now and then — that makes a blog a compelling read.
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Most of the commentary I’ve seen on this understandably takes a “how stupid they are” outlook toward those that run corporate blogs.
But I think we’re missing two further points. One is that corporate types aren’t listening to us. They’re ignoring our advice, our presentations, our white papers, etc. In effect, they’re showing us no respect.
I think we miss this. Forrester had another study come out a few months ago that showed 15 of 16 corporate socially networking efforts failing to meet the criteria Forrester has laid out in order to be successful.
That’s ridiculous. But it brings me to my second point.
We in social media have to be a lot more assertive in challenging top officers in our clients. Because if we don’t, the lack of trust and lack of effectiveness that we protest against (to one another) could end up hurting us as corporations give up or cut back efforts as they fail. That’s especially true during a recession.
I laid out my thoughts about this here:
http://digitalstreetjournal.com/wordpress/?p=129
I can’t agree more that a corporate blog is supposed to show the human side of the company, but in some cases I think it’s OK to blog mostly about the company. It really depends on the business.
Case in point:
Bob Fish, CEO and co-founder of the Midwest’s fastest growing coffee chain, BIGGBY COFFEE. There are 100+ stores and Bob travels to different ones, buys coffee for everybody in the store when he’s there, and interviews random customers and baristas while he’s there. He uploads these videos to his blog, http://www.biggbybob.com and people are elated to see themselves on the internet. On his blog right now is a video of him interviewing a guy who is actually a coffee competitor of his, but they’ve been friends for years.
When he’s not doing that, he usually blogs about where BIGGBY was spotted in the news, what certain stores are doing (charity events, for example), and posts videos that store owner/operators or baristas made. Recently a couple got engaged at one of the stores and he blogged about that. About 85% of what he blogs about has to do with BIGGBY COFFEE in some way, but he also ties it into other topics like the economy, entrepreneurship, and causes like United Way or “Save the Frogs.”
The majority, however, has to do with the company, and honestly, I don’t mind, and he’s never heard any complaints. I think the fact that it’s a coffee shop chain may give it a little more leeway because you can tie just about anything into a coffee shop and still make it sound interesting, but my point is that I think certain industries and companies can probably get away with blogging about their company more often than others.
Dec 14: PR top 5
1. Shel explains why Motrin moms really do matter. He’s right.
2. Kami is not too happy with Burg King’s new Burger Virgin campaign. “This campaign is dressed up like a documentary, but it really seems to be more an echo of the offens…
A different take from a media strategist’s perspective:
http://agitationist.com/corporate-blogs-arent-trusted-forrester-research
Most corporate blogs are too “corporate”, and filled with press releases, statements, etc. Those items should be on their about or news pages, while the blog should be more candid, spontaneous, and personable.
The Corporate mindset involves much sterile structure and censorship. Rarely do they stray off-track of focusing on the company and just the company. It seems the larger the corporation, the more serious the blogs are. Smaller companies seem to have more room for wider subjects. I have noticed this in the real estate industry as well. The larger brokers seem to have sterile written conservative blogs whereas the smaller brokers write very liberal on the same topics.
I know this has been stated before, but the corporate mindset does not understand the “free spirit” that blogging creates. They either choose to be that way or they just don’t have the right personal to write an interesting blog.