Blogging: The Future of Corporate PR

Written By Reprise Media May 9, 2005 Share This
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Whereas blogs started out as the new Geocities, a simple way for users to propagate very simple messages, entertainment reviews, photos and such, they now play host to content as insightful and vital as anything else on the web. Ultimately they’ve come to find substantial penetration across the web with great depth of interactivity. Pew released a study that says 7 percent of internet users, or 8 million Americans now post blogs, and 32 million read them. Of the 32 million that read them, 12% post comments.

Not only are blogs increasing their penetration of the web audience, they’re also picking up steam as a highly interactive and compelling channel whereby readers exhibit an enormous degree of ownership. On blogs, people freely exchange ideas, opinions, recipes, mp3s and more. Blogs are becoming as multimedia-oriented, if not more so, as any other web content. The type of relationships forged by Flickr and Blogger, ones which easily integrate photos and text, further suggests that blogs may be the new Geocities. The only difference is that people actually care about this Geocities.

Blogging is grass-roots, it’s viral, it’s trusted. Just as corporations began to seed message boards and newsgroups with self-serving contents and interactions, they’re now co-opting the blogosphere as well. Blogs are becoming an indispensable part of corporate outreach, and are becoming further refined for preemptive strikes against customer backlash and brand flare-ups. Just as Google and Microsoft have come to represent the changing of the guard, from government-intervention anti-trust Big Brother to a kinder, gentler, darling of Wall Street Big Brother, they also represent two companies that have taken to the blogosphere in completely disparate ways. One company has the right idea, the other does not.

Ironically it’s Microsoft that’s got the right idea on how to ply their corporate blog. Microsoft lured a celebrity blogger away from NEC, a Japanese technology company based in Silicon Valley, incidentally the prime breeding grounds for Microsoft-detractors. This man, Robert Scoble, posts his blogs independently from Microsoft and their servers, though he also happens to hold the working title of “Technical Evangelist” at Microsoft. Robert Scoble and his blog ‘Scoblizer’ have succeeded for Microsoft where no PR agency could, and that’s by giving Microsoft a softer, more human face (not quite the adorable Haley Joel Osment robot from AI, more like “Sonny” from I, Robot). He’s so disarmed his readership with his honest, mostly non-partisan coverage, that when he does come to Microsoft’s defense, he can make his claim and people not only listen openly, they often concede the point.

Google, on the other hand, has launched a blog that does little to foster a bi-lateral exchange of ideas. Their corporate blog appears to be little more than a sign-in book for employees, with the occasional congratulatory note from the department of Computer Science Department, UCLA. But there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to the blog’s design, let alone the content. Perhaps most importantly, because reader response is conveyed through emails, the channel welcomes neither a free exchange of ideas across party lines nor answers those concerns on the site. As for externally-hosted, less official Google blogs, we all remember how well that panned out.

So how should blogs be explored on the corporate side? By intent blogs are about open conversations, where brands attract consumers with compelling (and allegedly honest) content about their companies, culture, products, and customer service policies. The forum represents a mix of PR, marketing, and focus group testing. Jonathan Carson, president and chief executive officer of word-of-mouth research and planning firm BuzzMetrics, said that a client recently confessed that the blogosphere was fast becoming a better litmus test of consumer sentiment than even Consumer Reports magazine. Brands need to create these platforms in a laissez-faire manner, as if they have no more a personal investment in the dialogue that transpires than do the consumers. They’ll want to contribute daily in order to keep the lines of communication open, but they’ll also want to sanitize the community contents to eliminate link-farming and self-serving trackbacks.

Blogging is an opportunity for companies to aggressively engage consumers on their terms, with plenty of notice to craft a proper response. Does that suggest a Trojan horse used to subvert the customer? Maybe. But does that imply the customer isn’t being served and in the end won’t get what they want out of that relationship? Of course not…Look at the closely monitored pharmaceutical space: brands like Pfizer are not just limited in terms of what they can write in these blogs, but if a consumer complains of a drug side effect, Pfizer’s legally responsible to track that person down and make them report that side effect to the government. Let’s repeat that - Pfizer not only reads your postings, but they’re liable to respond and direct the consumer towards the proper authorities.

How can that be bad?

Randy Schwartz is Director of Strategic Development at Reprise Media.