Corporate Blogs - CIOs need to get naked.
September 15, 2006
This article by Jim Turner opens with a great obvservation:
Many businesses don’t want to be the leader in new and different ways of corporate communication. They like to be copycat for the things that work. Until companies begin to embrace blogs as an online marketing tool and a way to communicate with clients and customers, they will tread lightly, making sure that the water is warm before jumping in the pool.
When it comes to corporate communications, everything that is released has to be very much “on message”, and fit with the corporate image and to a certain extent I can understand that. There have to be limits on what can be posted on corporate blogs - can you imagine how one of Patricia Dunn’s blog posts from the last few weeks would have read:
Dear Readers, what a crap week. It’s Sunday, and I’ve been called into the office. Looks like those fresh-baked croissants will have to wait. Things don’t look too good at all. Mark is trying to be nice, but he hasn’t looked me in the eye for a week now, and George’s wife dropped in to say I was off their Christmas card list this year. On a brighter note, the share price didn’t take a hit, so I still might be able to bluff my way through this - the chairmanship is looking a bit shaky though…
PS - I think I might have to close Comments on the blog for now, because Tom Perkins won’t stop posting and it’s starting to piss me off…
OK - a lighthearted example, but you get what I mean. For corporate blogging to work there has to be a balance - the message to be delivered has to be understood by the people doing the blogging. They have to learn to “blog smart”.
The CIOs can lead this by blogging internally for their customers and colleagues - running an IT function for company touches pretty much all business areas; there’s alot to talk about. Enable comments, and get the conversations going; encourage your peers to start blogging internally too. Once a dialogue starts internally it becomes easier to take that platform for conversations outside. Blogging isn’t a one way street, and I think that’s what some business leaders don’t grasp (or maybe that’s what they’re afraid of).
What I find exasperating, though, is this attitude (from the article that Jim links to):
But not everyone is convinced by the blogging hype. Nic Evans, European IT director at Key Equipment Finance, said: “Personally I think corporate blogs are at best just a ‘jeans day’ version of more formal communications and at worst more benefit for the ego of the blogger than their potential audience.”
Dude, you’re missing the point - if I’m taking the time to read your blog, it’s because I care about your product/service which I’m spending my money/time on. I don’t want slick, polished marketing pap - I’ll read your homepage for that.
Posted in HP, blog, blogging, business, communication, conversations, tech
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September 15th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Interesting post, I fully agree.
“For corporate blogging to work there has to be a balance - the message to be delivered has to be understood by the people doing the blogging. They have to learn to “blog smart”.”
True, but doesn’t that hold true for any channel of corp. communications, whether it’s a blog or anything else? I doubt that Pat Dunn would have done so well in an interview recently - if you screw up like that it should be hard to keep face, whether it’s in your blog or on the street.
“[…] if I’m taking the time to read your blog, it’s because I care about your product/service which I’m spending my money/time on.”
Or because I care about your views (which can of course be related to your product/service). People don’t read Scoble just because he blogs about tech (quite a few people do that I hear). They read him because they like the way he writes. A gifted narrator can get people interested in your company in ways that a brochure can’t. Does that means you’ll sell more? Hard to say. But it certainly scratches an itch, meets a need, makes connections possible. Sorry to be so frank but “jeans day” my ass - Mr. Evans is simply unaware that up to now companies didn’t know what consumers wanted and consumers had no way of telling them.
September 27th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Cornelius, I hadn’t considered it from that angle - you’re right. I started reading Scoblizer because of the tech angle, but found that the non-tech posts were equally good; often compelling - his honesty when his Mother was reaching the end of her life must have won him a huge number of new friends.
When he left Microsoft the best quote I heard about his blog was “he was the open port through Microsoft’s firewall” (that was Adam Curry) and I think that’s a great observation, His blog was like getting right into the guts of the business, the products and the people who deliver them. That’s what I was getting at by “blog smart” - I think he managed it; sometimes he sailed pretty close to edge, but always knew where to draw the line.