Media Week

Companies such as Chrysler Group has used blogs in innovative ways to improve the ways they deal with journalists and other companies are using blogs to correct misrepresentations in the media.

Chrysler Group has set up a private blog for journalists which includes podcasts and transcripts so they can pull quotes and write articles. This kind of approach works well with journalists as they feel they are being given special access and they can exchange comments and views with heads of communication through the blog.

When Google was getting a lot of criticism over its plan to scan books, Google Print, senior executives used their blog to clarify points in the media and to respond quickly to any articles which they felt misrepresented their position. It gave them an instant and influential right to reply. CEO Eric Schmidt used the blog to defend Google in response to pieces in The New York Times but the blog also linked to other critical pieces so Google did not come across as completely one-sided.

Large corporations who attract bad coverage in the media are normally restricted to a letter or possibly a correction a few days later or they can put out their own release not knowing how much of it will be published. With a blog, a corporate communications team can instantly publish and gain a wide audience and link to other influential blogs and alert journalists that a response has been made. It has to be more effective especially as online media can easily set the agenda for TV, radio and the papers nowadays. I just don't think that major corporations on the whole have restructed their organisations and practices to face outwards towards the blogosphere and the web in general.

There are so many excuses why companies believe they should not blog. Here are a few reasons and some ways around potential obstacles:

It takes up too much time

Answer: It doesn't take up as much time as you think and they can be outsourced to agencies (if the blog is being used for marketing communications) or you can hire a blog editor like some companies have done.

 If you blog then you are going to face a potential backlash from the blogosphere

Answer

Create some good blogging guidelines. There are plenty of good examples and read other blogs to get an idea of what is appropriate.

 My brand will be damaged by negative comments

You can moderate comments on blogs so you don't have to publish them if you think they are too negative. You can have house rules clearly publicised on your blog so people know on what basis comments will be published. It is good though to publish some negative comments because it shows you are big enough to take criticism and it will make your blog more credible.

 It's too technical for me

Answer: Blogging software is easy to use and you don't have to be a great techie in order to get to grips with it. Putting posts and comments on this blog is really quite straightforward and I really like getting comments and feedback.

 We are going to lose control

Organisations have got to get used to the idea that they cannot control everything. There are masses of conversations going on now on the blogsophere about their brands and sectors. It is always on. If you don't join in the conversation then you are going to become irrelevant

 A few other points:

Using a blog can help you bypass mainstream media. It is faster and quicker.

 Using blogs can complement traditional PR.

Make sure you have contingency plans in plans. If a crisis breaks offline and blogs start talking about it you need to be able to respond. It is good to be responsive and you will get credit for that and in order to do so you need to know the influential blogs in your sector and you can post comments on them.

Blogs with their emphasis on more open and two way communications mean that traditional corporate messaging of the past is on the way out.

Senior executives who are embracing blogging are already reaping the dividends. As they realise they can communicate directly with stakeholders and customers without having their messages filted through the press.

Also they don't have to put up with the frustrations of not being able to respond quickly to any adverse comments. Bob Lutz, vice chairman of global product development for General Motors is one of the early pioneers of corporate blogging. He doesn't have much time for the 'same sterile, safe techniques' of corporate communications.  For him, blogs presented an opportunity to have conversations which were more human.

'It's more important than ever to open the door wide, speak as honestly as possible and listen to your customers,' he says.

Those defenders of the corporate communications status quo who say that blogging presents too many risks and that it could impact on a company's share price should note that everyone from the Economist to the FT to the BBC's business journalists are blogging today and if you are not aware of those conversations and participating in them, you are going to miss opportunities. The immediacy of blogging means that you can quickly respond to any developments in the market, if necessary. Far faster than you could with a traditional web site message.

I hear that a lot of PR agencies are trying to scare marketing directors about the perils of blogs. While there are risks to blogs, focusing unduly on the negative side is not a healthy long term strategy.

Blogs present an excellent opportunity for marketing directors to learn at first hand what customers think about particular issues and their products. It is a way of finding out the latest thinking and a relatively simple way of interacting with customers in real-time. In fact bloggers can act as highly effective online PR agents for companies if they are enthused about your company and what you are offering.

The reason why some PR agencies are talking up the risks of blogs is maybe because they are fearful of the changes that blogs are bringing in. Blogging is changing fundamentally the way that corporates communicate. Highly packaged, controlled messages are not going to work well in the blogosphere because they don't enable conversations.

I've just bought The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil and in it she quotes Peter Hirshberg, executive vice president of Technorati, the blog search engine. Hirshberg says:

'The nature of corporate communications will change. The voice will change. Fifty years of highly structured corporate-speak, of words that are poured over by teams of marcom and PR people will go away in favor of immediacy, plain talking and authenticity. It's not that corporate blogs will take off, it's that marketers will learn from bloggers how to speak in a human voice and this will show up in websites, in print advertising and on TV.

Current corporate-speak is a remant of one-way mass communication. It's stilted just as a soliloquy in Shakespeare seems stilted. Conversations are not speeches and soliloquies. As the audience and the customer become part of a two-way communication, corporations will learn to speak like people.'

Enlightened PR agencies should of course point out the risks of blogs and prepare their clients for what to do in a crisis but more significantly they should be working towards the future and encouraging marketers and corporate communications people to start entering into dialogues and conversations with bloggers. It will lead to a change in the language of business. But that's probably a good thing in the long run as companies will become more accessible to their customers and gain a better understanding of what their customers think and want.

Too many companies think they can just add a dollop of social media onto their campaigns but it is not going to work well in the long term.

More and more people are using the web to make social connections. So therefore brands need to be social. They need to find out what is being said online about their brands and issues in their markets so they understand how they can join in. But it is not the same as simply issuing a press release. Brands have to engage with consumers in different ways. They have to earn attention by offering something genuinely interesting and valuable. If you think of blogs as a dynamic letters page, you obviously have to stop and think about how best you can respond and participate you don't simply fire something off to the letters editor hoping that he or she will be interested. Much more thinking is required if brands are going to engage effectively with their online consumers. This is something which affects all communications teams and they need to take time out to understand the social media culture otherwise they are not going to be able to participate within it in any meaningful way for their businesses.

Many companies are interested in how they can get their messages out across Facebook. The prospect of reaching 47 million people is certainly attractive.

There's an interesting piece in this month's edition of Net Magazine (www.netmag.co.uk) about creating Facebook applications. According to the magazine, 65% of all useres install two or more applications on their profile.

So any company that can create an application that Facebook users want to install is going to create excellent exposure for their brand. The big question is what makes a compelling Facebook application? It has to genuinely be something that captures the imagination and attention of Facebook users, anything less and it will go nowhere or it will only reach a relatively small audience. Popular causes could capitalise well on Facebook applications and so could brands who lend themselves easily to fun. As more companies attempt to create Facebook applications, the competition will get fiercer and companies have got to be prepared to experiment to see what happens and to learn from their mistakes.

 A new social networking report from Experian and Hitwise has cautioned companies about how they interact with social media networks.

http://www.hitwise.co.uk/registration-page/uk-social-networking.php.

Jimmy Wales, the man behind Wikipedia, has lauched a new search engine which lets users rate the relevance of results then apply that information to shape future search results shown to others.

Jimmy has said that he wants to build a completely freely licensed open source search engine which draws on online social network ideas. Critics say that he could be the victim of spammers. Machines will get the search going before user recommendations come into play. And unlike Wikipedia, this is a commercial venture. Jimmy hopes to sell ads on Wikia (www.wikia.com). Can Jimmy fix it? We will see.