Contents

 by Marc Wright

It is the hot new tool in corporate communications that none of us can ignore for much longer.  This chapter looks at what a blog is and how you can set one up; why they work; the power of external blogs; how to use blogs internally; the legal ramifications; and the key do's and don't's.

What is a blog?

Blog is short for weblog - a log that anyone can write and publish online.  The clever bit is that blogs are interactive.  They invite others to respond and comment on what they have just read.  It's like a cross between an email and a webpage - a medium for one person to talk to many, but with the many having the chance to answer back. 

They are made possible by a simple piece of software that you can download from the web.  A popular version is typepad or wordpress but there are numerous sources - and they are all very good value for money.  You can be up and blogging in minutes for a monthly fee that's less than the cost of a bistro lunch. 

A blog is different to a message board or a chat room in that it is driven by the thoughts and writings of the blogger.  Other people can then respond to the blog and post their own views online - but these are tributaries off the main stream; the reader will always return to the blogger's column.

But describing a blog through its technical capability is like describing Pride and Prejudice as a medium sized book with stiff covers.  The technology is irrelevant; what is important is what you do with your blog.

Why do they work?

Blogs work because they deliver the authentic voice of an individual.  They circumvent the usual PR happy brochure speak that is the curse of corporate communication.  They work because they are immediate and are associated with a human face of your company or brand.  They are like a note dashed off while waiting to board an airplane:  all the embellishments of polite writing are stripped away - leaving just pure opinion, pithily expressed.  It is this quality of authenticity that makes them so appealing to the reader - a good blog reads as if you are getting the news first hand.

Of course it all depends on the writer; a lawyer will probably make a poor blogger, checking his facts to the nth degree, covering his statements with caveats and get-out clauses and reviewing and revising a document to the point of insipid irrelevance.  But if you - or a senior director - have strong opinions and a clear idea of what you want to say and can get to your laptop in a timely and regular fashion, then blogging is for you.

The power of external blogs

Journalists love blogs - it gives them online access to attributable sources inside your company.  For better or for worse, they can circumvent the PR officer and get to your CEO's views (or at least they think they can).  Blogs allow a direct feed from your senior directors' minds to the outside world, and appear to give an openness and honesty - particularly if the blog publishes criticism of your company in any posted replies. 

Readers and consumers find these postings refreshing.  Here at last is a company that is prepared to be honest in its own communication and is big enough to take negative comments.  Journalists can copy and paste the thoughts of senior executives and track the views of others inside and outside the organisation through a blog conversation that keeps expanding.

Sure, there is a risk that people will be critical but criticism of your company already exists on the web.  Just type your company name into Google followed by the word "sucks" and you will get an idea of what is out there. 

Through a corporate blog, you can control the more extreme and illegal comments through a blog moderator, and you get all the kudos of a communciation channel that makes you look transparent.

Companies love blogs because they offer them free, word-of-mouth marketing for them and their products.  Gary Grates is Vice President of Communications at General Motors, North America.  He has developed two very successful blogs for the car-maker. http://smallblock.gmblogs.com/ which is a highly focused blog on a particular range of GM engines, and http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/ which is a platform for Bob Lutz to talk about more general goings-on in the GM world.  He writes from the hip - usually without much concern for legal clearance;  his blog gets an incredible 7,500 visits a day and generates 3,600 consumer responses.

Since each blog constitutes a web page, these can be searchable - which means that many users will be driven to your site via a blog.  The blog run by Air Conditioning Contracts of America is second only to Google in driving traffic (and income) to their website as engineers log on to get answers to specific questions.

Using blogs for internal communication

Because blogs are interactive, they are ideal for getting conversations going inside an organisation and they can be a litmus test for contentious issues that are bubbling under the surface. 

Debbie Weil is a thought leader in blogging in the US and is working on a book on Corporate Blogging for Penguin.  In the short history of blogging, she has long been an advocate for CEO blogging.  People are genuinely interested in what the senior directors of the company are doing with their working week. 

A blog is an opportunity for a CEO to demonstrate what is most important to them at the time.  If they are focussed on a particular subject, then others will be as well.  And if your CEO finds the time at the end of a busy schedule to write 300 words on the subject, then that is even more impactful. 

GM monitor and censor any comments from the workforce that could be libellous or insulting but otherwise they let all comments through onto the blog.  It is a self-managing system; if someone is unfair or unrepresentative in their comments, then others soon contribute to the blog to give a more rounded picture of the issue.

Your blog does not have to come from the top.  Subject experts buried inside your organisation can become blogging stars if they are masters of their subject.  There is no official blog in Microsoft - instead there are more than 200 individuals blogging inside the company.

The legal bits

The down-side of blogging is just too horrendous for the legal mind to contemplate - a combination of libel law, trademark infringement and the CEO unbridled all constitute a nightmare for your legal department.  That's why many communicators don't bother to get the lawyers involved until after the blog has been running for a while.  By then the upsides are more obvious, the CEO will be converted and none of your staff have broken the law.  It's all a question of being able to trust smart people - that's why you hired them in the first place. 

Clearly, you have to take some basic precautions:  a trained moderator who checks comments for libel before they are posted, and a cool head of communications who can spot trouble at 7 pm on a Friday evening when the CEO wants to use the corporate blog to settle scores with the Press.

Do's and don'ts 

Do:

• Keep your blog down to a couple of paragraphs

• Use active language

• Encourage feedback

• Monitor the blogosphere - know what others are saying

• Stay focussed and specialist

• Keep new weblog content coming - at least once a week

Don't:

• Ghost write your CEO's blog - you'll be found out

• Get too diffuse - remember the blog is there to build the company's reputation and sell product

• Comment on your share price

• Criticise new blogs that spring up from other departments; it's the best way of killing them stone dead

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