Public Relations Best
Practices
Getting the Most Out of a Corporate Blog
By Michelle Bauer
Published: April / May 2008
Fostering open communications within a company has
become much easier and much more complicated all at the
same time. The company newsletter – a weekly download of
information disseminated by the CEO or some other
designated party charged with informing the troops about
what’s happening in the organization – is giving way to
more participatory forms of communications like blogs
and wikis.
More companies are embracing blogs as their preferred
mode of internal, and even external, communications
these days. If your organization is considering taking
the plunge into the blogosphere, following are some
things you might consider.
Identify a specific purpose for the blog and what you
want to achieve with it. There are some 20 million blogs
in the U.S., with more coming online everyday. That’s a
lot of noise. If your purpose is to launch a blog to
elevate your Google search rankings, be prepared to
dedicate time and resources toward that goal. It’s not
impossible, but your blog needs to be very compelling,
updated regularly, and widely read to achieve that.
If you’d like to host a free exchange of information
with the public about your company’s products and
services, you are to be commended. But you’d better be
prepared. Some company blogs welcome – and state so
openly – all kinds of feedback ranging from rave reviews
to unsparing criticism. And they get healthy doses of
both. Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Clearwater's Sunbelt
Software, has had a widely read and well respected blog
for several years. "I use my corporate blog (www.sunbeltblog.com)
to communicate not only to the outside world, but to
express my personal vision and philosophy to the
company. Blogs are also an informal content management
tool -- a running record of a lot of thoughts, opinions,
ideas and links," he says. Those thoughts and opinions
help him keep informed about his customers’ greatest
needs and help him determine how to respond.
You can also leverage your company blog to get your
customers’ ideas and suggestions for developing new
products and services or improving existing ones. For
organizations that go that route, blogs become something
like “the world’s largest focus group,” according to
Josh Hallett, an internationally recognized authority on
corporate blogging and social media in corporate public
relations and marketing. Don’t get too excited over the
possibility of conducting such low cost (relatively
speaking ) market research, however. Hallett cautions
that those who most actively participate in corporate
blogs are often composed of hardcore fans, critics, or
early adopters – great if you are catering exclusively
to those audiences, but problematic if your product or
service has target customers beyond them.
If you’d prefer a more private conversation among the
employees within your organization, take these steps to
ensure that your company blog performs successfully as
an internal communications tool:
Establish a policy for blog postings so that your
employees will have a clear understanding of how to
engage. This is the issue most executives wrestle with
when they’re mulling over the “to blog or not to blog”
question. You probably don’t want your blog to give free
rein to a few highly opinionated people who’ll sound off
about everything now that they have an audience. But you
don’t want to gag people either. You won’t get honest
and constructive feedback if your employees fear
reprisals for pointing out things they believe need to
be addressed or improved.
Take advantage of the highly interactive and multimedia
opportunities blogs afford you. Let’s say your company
is developing a new product. You can have developers and
testers post problems, give troubleshooters a forum for
their discoveries and fixes, videotape the performance
or look of a prototype, and invite suggestions for
improvements. Visual demonstrations can communicate
better than words to help people understand a product or
service’s performance in action. You might even consider
inviting existing customers and other early adopters to
participate in the development process as well.
Who will own this thing? What would happen, as one
blogging expert inquired hypothetically, if we threw a
blog and nobody came?
There’s no point in having a blog unless it’s an active
and engaging forum read by more than just a few people.
But keeping that blog interesting and focused requires a
champion or group of champions. You might pick, say, the
four or five most passionate people in customer service
or product development departments, or other people who
believe in their contributions to the growth of the
organization. These are the folks you want posting
regularly, maintaining the quality of the conversation,
and flavoring the blog with a focus and point of view
that helps achieve the company’s goals.
The group approach keeps the heat off one person to
shoulder responsibility for the blog and prevents
burnout. But, “having one person designated as the lead
blogger makes sense. He or she would oversee the site
and make sure that editorial content is in line with the
company's point of view. This person wouldn't
necessarily write all of the material, but they'd be the
final authority in what gets posted and what doesn't,”
offers Matt Keegan, a freelancer writer who spent 20
years doing technical writing for an aviation company.
Put the blog on the company Intranet to limit your
exposure. Let your employees know that the information
posted on the blog is the intellectual property of the
company and may not be shared with non-employees. Keegan
further recommends requiring those posting to the blog
to register or otherwise identify themselves to
discourage anonymous posts and allow commentators to
“take ownership of their words.”
Blogs may not be the cure-all for a company that needs
to instill a more open and constructive dialogue with
its employees and customers. But it is an easy, cost
effective tool to set up and is certainly worth a try.
Michelle Bauer is the CEO
& President of Common Language, a strategic
communications firm headquartered in St. Petersburg,
Florida. Visit
www.common-language.com for more information. Or
contact Michelle at
michelle@common-language.com
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