CorpComms Magazine

It's a delicate political call. In this digital age, corporate blogs are fast becoming the mouthpiece of companies. So how should they react to a news event as pivotal as Barack Obama being elected the first African American president of the United States?

The day after Obama's election win, Sun Microsystems' blog offered bland congratulations. Boeing provided a worthy series of links to information about Obama's aviation policy. Kodak offered highlight photographs of Election Day and Google's blog gave a list of the most searched words as Americans went to the polls.

It took the maverick Italian fashion retailer Benetton to pin any political colours to the mast - with a collection of the least flattering images of President Bush's eight years in office, including shots of the Commander-in-Chief being attacked by a turkey and performing a west African dance.

‘You know what they say about relationship squabbles, getting busted by the cops and tragedies in general,' said Benetton Talk. ‘Once they're over, they actually start to seem very funny.'

Blogs are supposed to be personal, opinionated, informal and discursive. The idea is to create a buzz, to start a debate and to stimulate interest. But a lot of buttoned-up, controlling PR departments just fail to understand this.

A study by the technology consultancy Forrester Research recently found that 70 per cent of corporate blogs stick rigidly to business and do not share any personal insights or experience. Many of them, says Forrester analyst Laura Ramos, read like ‘tired, warmed-over press releases' in which executives ‘yak away about their companies and products, seemingly oblivious to whether their audience is listening or not'.

The number of companies starting blogs is on the wane. Forrester only found three new corporate blogs in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 36 over the whole of 2006 and 19 in 2007.

‘I think the present notion of the corporate blog is destined for obscurity,' says Ramos. She believes blogs are better suited to creative types within companies than to chief executives and marketing directors who presently tend to pontificate in cyberspace.

‘If it's only coming from marketing or corporate communications executives, unless they're doing something really interesting, it doesn't work,' she says. ‘It's got to be leaders of new practices, key scientists, ideas people within companies - because that's what blogging is about - surrendering some of that control of communications.'

TOUGH AND GRITTY?

Only about 12 per cent of the 133m blogs on the Internet are corporate, according to online tracking firm Technorati. They are of decidedly varied quality - and many of them have a tendency to avoid tricky issues.

Debbie Weil, the US-based author of The Corporate Blogging Book, noted recently that corporate blogs have been notably silent on the global economic crisis. You will not find Delta Airlines' blog Under The Wing saying much about high fuel prices, delays and shrinking schedules. Instead, it is all cuddly stuff about charitable sponsorship and aviation memorabilia.

In contrast, the computer firm Dell has an extensive network of blogs that delves deeply into business-related issues and incorporates video, audio, technical support and community forums.

‘If you don't do it right, they're very dull,' says Weil. ‘They're not updated often enough and there's no community.'

She says corporate blogging amounts to more than just slapping a blog onto a website and asking already time-starved executives to contribute. A blog has to be part of a broader strategy of using social media - which could include social networking, a corporate Facebook page, a YouTube channel and Flickr photo libraries.

While only a few avid fans may read a corporate blog regularly, thousands more will come across entries in the course of Internet searches. Weil says: ‘Everybody is online. They're on Google. They're searching. People are bumping into these blogs when they're looking for information on-line. They're important - they're about mapping out your digital future.'

Among the more engaging corporate blogs is Marriott on the Move by the hotel chain's chief Bill Marriott. Admittedly the 76 year old is an unlikely looking technophile, with grey hair, a sober suit and a bland executive smile. But it's an interesting - and often personal - diary combining anecdotes about hotel visits with pontificating on favourite books and, on one occasion, the birth of a granddaughter.

When suicide bombers destroyed Marriott's Islamabad-based hotel in Pakistan in September, the chairman's sorrow and anger was palpable. Under the heading This senseless tragedy, he wrote of Marriott's security guards who died in the attack. ‘These guys were defending the lives of hotel guests and their fellow co-workers. They were killed in the line of their duty,' he wrote.

His entry attracted scores of sympathetic posts from staff and customers around the world and helped to humanise a multinational that could, so easily, be a faceless American corporate entity.

Another success is General Motors' Fast Lane blog, which has made a genuine effort to address concerns about the struggling US motor industry.

It has included videos of GM's chief executive, Rick Wagoner, talking with surprising frankness about his company's problems - along with updates on key projects such as the development of the Chevrolet Volt, an electric car keenly awaited by motor industry followers.

For many in the world of public relations, blogging is a precursor to a broader change. Could it be a sign that the days of the bland press release, with a carefully edited artificial quote from an executive, are numbered?

Lex Suvanto, managing director at strategic communications agency Abernathy MacGregor in New York, says companies can no longer think of websites as ‘static, one-dimensional brochures'.

‘The future of a website is something more interactive, something far more frequently updated,' he says. ‘It's not just about pushing out messages but about gathering in messages from your customers and constituents.'

APPLY WITH CARE

Significantly, the US Securities & Exchange Commission announced in July that statements on corporate blogs could, under certain circumstances, count as official public disclosures to investors. That followed pressure from Sun Microsystems' boss, Jonathan Schwartz, who started a dialogue with the SEC on his blog, urging more freedom in what he could write.

This means companies no longer have to rely on boring old press releases to make announcements. But consultants caution that blogging, still, is an undertaking to be approached with care.

‘The biggest issue is that it takes time, it takes money and it takes resources,' said Suvanto. He tells clients that they need a clear long-term mission for a blog - and that for short-term fire fighting, they could be better off with a micro-site or an alternative, temporary solution.

‘Some companies will just say We've got to get in on this,' said Suvanto. ‘That's not a good answer for why you're starting a blog. Those folks are not usually prepared for what's involved.'

Cautionary tales abound on the subject of blogging in the corporate world. Most of them involve companies trying to be too cute - or approaches which seem just a little too mercenary.

Panasonic started a blog in 2005 under a photo by-line of a suave Polish-Indian metrosexual, Tosh Bilowski. The blogosphere was confused, finding no trace of such an individual elsewhere on-line. Panasonic clarified that Bilowski was a ‘fictional character' used to deliver information from multiple sources. The blog lasted less than a year.

Last year, a Google staffer ruffled feathers on the company's advertising blog through an entry attacking Michael Moore's polemical documentary Sicko as a sensationalist movie which was unfair to the healthcare industry. The employee, Lauren Turner, suggested that drugs companies run advertisements promoting their good deeds alongside search results for Sicko. She was swiftly rebuked - and hurriedly apologised two days later, saying her views were her own, rather than those of Google.

Paul Gillin, a US author and social media consultant, says blogs can be handy in raising public awareness of a brand, in addressing ethical issues and in promoting new products. Or, quite simply, in communicating with stakeholders.

But, he argues, blogs need to be well thought out - otherwise they can be counter-productive. ‘There tends to be too much focus on tools and not enough focus on the reason for using these tools,' says Gillin. ‘You should never put up a blog for the sake of it because you will do it badly and then you will look stupid.'.

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