I normally don't post the full text of my speeches on line, seeing as that information is usually intended for a specific audience, and my written account is more of a guidepost than the accurate text. These were my set of notes for the SIMSTL speech I gave last Tuesday, and I thought they might be interesting for some of the audience, as was requested. These are just notes, not a full article. I've attached the Powerpoint, also.
Text of Speech: How Blogs Can Make (Or Break) a Corporate Reputation
Social media is the relatively new phenomenon of many-to-many communication, versus the more traditional one-to-one or one-to many communication that has dominated the business world since the first introduction of newspapers. There are many forms of social media: Blogging was the first of these to gain phenomenon status, but in the last two years, social networking sites like MySpace, Online Video portals like YouTube, podcasting, vloggin, viral marketing, and consumer-created advertising have all hit the mainstream. The basic principle is simple – corporations used to craft a message and broadcast it to the general public. This was one way communication, where the message was tightly controlled. Social media is in part a wave of reaction to a glut of marketing messages, but also an expression of the very real need of human beings to share their thoughts, their experiences, and their accomplishments.
e’re going to cover four areas in a short period of time. The first is the technical explanation of blogs. The second will be a overview of the blogosphere, or the bloggers themselves. The third will be specific corporate examples of ways that corporations have benefited and been hurt by blogs, and the final part will be a personal description of what you can do on a personal level to understand, benefit from, and protect yourselves from a blogswarm
How Corporate Blogging Can Make (Or Break) Your Company’s Reputation.
What A Blog Is: The Technical Definition
A blog is a content management tool. That’s the secret. The core of a blog is just a database. It’s a database of information that pushes that information out into a series of templates to create something that looks like an online column. That’s it.
Because from a technical standpoint they require so little knowledge, the writers of these blog can focus on content, which allows everyone from 8 year olds to 80 year olds the ability to publish quickly on the web. .
One major reason blogs are so effective is their SEO-friendly qualities. Each entry, known as a blogpost, is an individual and category archive, making an easy sitemap for search engine spiders. Blogs are frequently updated with fresh content, which means the spiders are trained to come back regularly. And finally, blogging takes place in a community, where other bloggers provide numerous backlinks to each other to discuss what they’ve seen. All in all, it’s the SEO dream, which is why it was possible for my blog brandstorming, to gain a PageRank 5 on Google 4 months after we launched it, and I didn’t apply any SEO tricks to it.
The Blogosphere: Size and Influence
So the blog is just a database, but if that were all that was to it, we wouldn’t be here. What makes a blog special – what makes it different than a message board, or an e-zine, or a website, is really the community that forms around a blog. The blog is not revolutionary – it is the blogger, and the community of blogs, which is known as the blogosphere. Blogging by its very nature is a form of online networking that encourages multiple links, discussions, and personal descriptions of life experiences. The instant nature of blogging, helped my feedback in the form of comments, trackbacks, and hyperlinks makes blogging a communal experience. If you write a blog, and no one comments, either on your site, or on their own by providing a link to your site, then you’re not part of a community, you’re just a voice crying in the wilderness. But by joining a community – whether that’s politics, social life, knitting, marketing, CEO roundtables, food packaging, or chemistry, you’re contributing to a discussion that filters the best content and creates a hierarchy of thought leaders with a high online profile and the respect of trusted peers. That trust is the currency in the blogosphere. Net-savvy consumers know that you can’t trust everything you read on the internet. If an anonymous individual or someone who no one knows pretends to be an expert on a subject, or leaves a nasty comment about a company, they are generally ignored.
But someone trusted, someone who has taken the time to prove themselves over a period of time, is not rabble. They’ve built up an online profile and an online search engine ranking that pushes their words to the top of online food chain.
When the number of bloggers was only a few thousand, that didn’t mean much to corporations. Today, that figure is over 60,000,000 in languages all over the world. Think of it – a giant mass of the public, 60,000,000 strong, SEO friendly, and talking about your products, your services, your employment processes, your CEO’s, your stock, your customer service. These aren’t new conversations, but they are conversations that have previously have been held only in one-to-one discussions. The “buzz” around your brand, is not published for the world to see.
How A Blog Affects the Corporate World.
Blogs affect the corporate in a few key ways.
1) The first is in raw information. The conversations about companies that used to take place in one-to-one conversations are now broadcast through the world. A photo, or video, or document can be uploaded to YouTube or from your cellphone, but blogs are the information network that spread the documents far and wide.
2) A second place is in customer experience. Good and bad experiences are reported, and if there is enough of an interesting story, the blogpost takes off and is linked to tens, hundreds, or thousands of sites, and then picked up by the media. It’s like You Paid For It, but pushed by millions of people, instead of a television channel. .
3) A
third way is the positive way, where companies with good products, services, or
employees get launched from a Word of Mouth that is finally and truly
global. Consumers don’t hate companies –
they just want them to perform. If you
put on a good performance, bloggers are talking about you. An example of this is in digital cameras,
video games, services for parents, and other of your traditional channels that
you take testimonials from. The
difference, is rather than a name like Terri, Director of Sales from
Michigan
, you have a trusted name who can’t afford to spread poor advice to his or her audience. This affects you for employment branding, sales, PR, Marketing, and Customer Service.
Let’s take a look at some:
Corporate Examples
Starwood Resortt – The Lobby
Southwest Airlines – Nutz about Southwest – passenger seating
SprintPCS – a developer and a PR Blog
T-Mobile – Employment blog at wireless jobs.com
Microsoft – thousands of employee blogs and Channel 9
Sun Microsystems – thousands of blogs, including developer blogs
General Motors – Bob Lutz -0 Fast Lane
Marriott – Just Joined
Boeing
GE
Wells
Fargo
Mistakes
Sony – Several Fake blogs, lately for the Sony PSP
Kryptonite Locks
Walmart – several fiascos – but big target – blogs were written by Walmart and Edelman employees
Dell – Jeff Jarvis
McDonald’s – Lincoln French Fry
Comcast – technician falling asleep on the couch
Diet Coke – and Mentos – You Tube, but DietCoke reacted poorly, Mentos asked for more.
Apple – several lawsuits against bloggers
7-Up – Teen’s drink – flavored milk – teens were paid to talk about it, blog was exposed.
- Google yourself.
- Make sure you have a corporate blog policy, just as you would have an Internet use, e-mail, or dress-code policy
- Read a few blogs.
- Reach out and make friends with bloggers
- Consider starting your own, maybe by asking employees if they blog, and asking them to show you how it’s done.
- Never, ever create a fake blog.
- Treat a blog initiative like any other corporate initiative. IN other words, have a point.
- Don’t believe the hype.
