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The Wall Street Journal has coverage of a new report from Forrester Research which claims that most corporate blogs are a dull failure. Lacking imagination, timeliness and engagement, Forrester notes that there are very few new corproate blogs starting up compared to just a year ago and that 53 percent of marketers believe that blogs have a marginal impact at best on their strategies.
I would agree that most corporate blogs tend to flop with a resounding "thud" when executives responsible for them discover that - 'gads! - it's a lot of work to maintain one. Many CEOs, especially those of companies that have publicly issued stock, are so used to the corporate lawyers poring through every sentence that emanates from the company that they fail to develop a style that's engaging and worth reading. Blogs are for people who have something to say to an audience - they're not PR machines in the manner in which a typical marketer would like them to be. They are an opportunity to enable people who can articulate their own view of the world well to make that view a corporate asset that starts conversations.
One example in the WSJ article of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz' blog is a great one. Jonathan (or the person writing his blog) knows how to chat up a topic, add nice illustrations that spice it up and still manages to get across a point with a clear voice that's relevant to his company and his audience. As far as the other example in the WSJ article, though, I have to scratch my head over why "Greg the Architect," a "blog" developed for TIBCO, a major technology company, is a conversation starter. As you can see above it's a catchy looking site, to be sure - for someone. Maybe gamers or someone else who doesn't have a clue as to what a conversation is might stumble into this cartoonish world and find something worth thinking about. But as a blog, it's...not. It's a slick piece of online communications that doesn't really communicate a personal point of view at all. Maybe it drives site metrics, but I doubt that it drives corprorate value. It's a conversation piece that will build an audience, but not a conversation.
I agree that there should be a fun aspect to corporate content that engages people on a regular basis as a point to take a breather as much as a point to get informed, but corporations shouldn't be afraid to develop a thought leadership role through blogging. When your CEO or evangelist or whomever your blogging point person may be walks into a room at a conference or at a sales call you want that person's point of view to be known, to be respected and to be eagerly awaited as a presence. If corporations are failing at having people like this blogging for them, then I'd suggest that they're failing to attract people with skills that can provide invaluable marketing assets. There are only so many people who can do this, though, so if you can't hire them as employees at least hire someone who can "ghost-blog" for you in a style that fits your lead person's personality.
In this metrics-obsessed world there's also a little too much emphasis on comments as a barometer of blogging success. While comments can be valuable, it's far more important that the phone rings and a person-to-person conversation begins as the result of a blog post. In the book Content Nation I give an example of a CEO whose blog resulted in a sales breakthrough with a key prospect - because her blog make a point in an honest and thoughtful way that her prospect finally "got" through a key blog post.
Corporate blogging takes time, it takes a strategy and it takes a commitment to a form of communications that is far more than PR. It also takes more than just a blog to make a blog successful - it takes a core group of people who are committed readers and a willingness to engage the markets in other social media venues as well. The power of social media is about empowering your clients to engage you in conversations through your own company's ability to demonstrate that it knows how to have a conversation. You don't need cartoons and other gimmickery to tell people that you're ready to talk. Just start talking sincerely, engagingly and consistently - and the rest will start to happen.
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