I featured in a Marketing Magazine article today on the topic of BLOGGING. It was written by Duncan Riley and dealt with the relationship between communications (specifically blogging) and company image.
Here are my comments in full:
Blogging is about developing a conversation and building relationships over time. By establishing credibility, authenticity and transparency, organisations can build trust with target audience groups. Strategy for corporate blogging needs to be aligned with broader communications goals and business objectives. There are, however, two fundamentals for a corporate blog. First, a blog is not an additional sales and marketing channel. A blog that espouses corporate messages will fail. That’s the role of the website. Second, the blog should represent a single identifiable voice or group of voices within an organisation and should be written by that individual. External consultants can provide advice on style and topics but ultimately the content and insights needs to come from the author. Blogs need to provide a human face to an organisation, be consistent and interactive (i.e. responsive to feedback) to build credibility. Organisations need to think long and hard about resourcing. The voice of the CEO sounds great in practice but will he or she have the time or the inclination in reality? Organisations need to consider the target audience, their interests and the most suitable spokesperson, as they would during the planning stages of any communications program. Clients also need to consider style, content, objectives and protocols. Included in the latter are issues relating to legalities and corporate disclosure. There are good examples from overseas of large corporations that have used blogging to engage their stakeholders and target audiences. GM and Boeing have opened up its product development processes via a blog and received a lot of participation and involvement from readers and interested parties that revel in the transparency that GM is providing. Blogs are a great tool for internal communications, replacing (or supporting) the company newsletter and providing a mechanism for interaction and conversations between employees. Many organisations begin with an internally focused blog to gain confidence and credibility before rolling this out externally. This can be a great strategy as an external blog that starts enthusiastically but gradually goes dormant is more damaging to a company reputation than no blog at all.
There may be readers out there that disagree with the idea of corporations blogging. The whole topic gives rise to some interesting issues, which I will endeavour to explore in the coming weeks.
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