A new blog is created every second. So, in the time it took you to read that statement four more blogs were launched. That’s four more people creating their own online journal. Four more people who may be writing about your organisation, your products, and your brand values.
Blogs (short for Weblogs) are perhaps the most potent demonstration of the democratisation of new media. Individuals – exorcised by any number of vendettas – can hop onto their digital soapbox and target whomsoever they wish; be it a politician, a corporation or a cause.
Blogs are not necessarily ‘mud-slinging’ sites, in fact more often than not bloggers (those who blog) champion causes and celebrate those things they deem worthy of praise. Neither are blogs merely the domain of the geek or the obsessive. This view may well have been held two or three years ago, when blogs started to prick the public consciousness – and therefore allowed those who weren’t engaged in blogging to dismiss their impact.
But too many brands have had their fingers burnt, or had to react quickly to avoid being burnt by blogs for this to be the case any longer.
The power of the blog
Jeff Jarvis famously caused all manner of problems for Dell Computers through his blog posting, titled ‘Dell lies. Dell sucks’. The story is fully dealt with online (a simple Google search will furnish you with pages of detailed background) but in essence Jarvis was treated poorly, his complaints weren’t dealt with so he decided to blog his experience. It can’t be proven – beyond all reasonable doubt – that Jarvis’s blog was directly responsible, but Dell’s customer satisfaction rating, market share and share price in the US all shrank following his posting.
Charlie Cannell, director of Edelman Interactive Solutions, says, “It is clear that the image and therefore the brand of a company is at risk if blogging is not taken seriously. The impact of a happy or unhappy blogger can be huge. For Dell, over a two month period the share value dropped from 40.75 to 32 cents.”
More recently the almost untouchable Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers, had to backtrack when a disgruntled iPod Nano owner aired his dissatisfaction at the ease with which the Nano’s screen scratched. At first Apple did nothing and refused to accept culpability.
So Matthew Peterson (the blogger with the original complaint) pressed on and encouraged other disgruntled owners to post their complaints on his blog www.flawedmusicplayer.com. Sure enough, Apple was forced to address the issue.
The difference between Dell and Apple is that Dell failed to realise the true reach of Jarvis’s blog and suffered as a result. Apple, though sluggish at first, reacted quickly enough and eventually garnered some positive press for the way it reacted.
If two heavyweight brands such as these are affected, shouldn’t your organisation sit up and take notice?
Actually, it’s a moot point. While brands need to be aware of blogs, they don’t necessarily have to dive head-first into the world of blogging. As with so much new technology and new media, there is a sense that if everyone is doing it, it must be right. But restraint should be shown.
Katy Howell, managing director of Immediate Future, says, “Blogging is not great for all companies; it simply doesn’t work for every organisation. I get lots of B2B brands telling me they want to create a blog… but why? Why do they want to? What benefit will it give them? Who are they trying to reach? What is the end game?”
James Layfield, managing director at The Lounge, agrees that there is a danger of people blogging for blogs’ sake. “Part of the problem is that blogs seem like quite sexy things to do. Marketing directors and CEOs have heard the term and so everyone wants to set up their own blogs.”
Many people question why a company would wish to set up its own blog. For many, a large part of the attraction of blogs is their independence from corporate brands or sponsorship. Tim Gibbon, director of Elemental PR, explains that “these little communities can be powerful: the word-of-mouth is very strong and there is no sense that you are being sold to. Because it’s peer-to-peer, people trust it much more.”
Can corporate blogs work?
Opinion is divided as to whether corporate blogs can ever work. But nevertheless it is something that is increasing.
According to online encyclopedia, Wikipedia: ‘with the rise in popularity of blogs in 2004, senior management caught on to the trend and by January 2005 several types of organisations, including universities, had started using blogs to communicate with their stakeholders.’
Layfield, however, is adamant that the vitality of blogs lies in their independence and that brands should butt out. “I just don’t think brands can set up their own blogs, it just won’t work. Brands setting up their own blogs is a very strange one and a bit of a fad. Much better to set up a website – which is pretty obvious – and passively push the information. Blogs are an active medium, you are actively seeking comment, feedback and interaction and I don’t think that’s a particularly safe place for a brand to be.”
Others though are not so strongly opposed to the idea, so long as the brand is creating a blog for the right reasons. Howell has an exhaustive checklist of reasons to blog or not to blog, many of which would seemingly rule out most B2B brands ever considering such a move.
“If you’re not a naturally transparent organisation, you shouldn’t blog. If everything has to pass through your PR or legal department before you can get anything out of the door, you shouldn’t blog. If you are wary of stockholder perceptions, don’t blog. If you’re nervous or anxious of your board of directors and their thin skins, don’t blog. If you endlessly want to promote yourself, don’t do it. If you can’t commit to it regularly, don’t blog,” she says.
Howell claims that when an organisation should blog is when it is prepared to be transparent, when it wants to give a human interface to what it does. “If you want to quickly announce information or provide thought leadership, if you want to fan the flames of customer evangelism or spread a buzz – in other words if you want to be a more human character and you want feedback ” blogging is great. This is particularly true in the engineering industries or anywhere that there is a technical requirement, where you can create blogs that work very well.”
A new way of thinking
This is all well and good, but how many B2B brands are in a position – according to Howell’s credo – to take up the blogging challenge?
Andy Graham, positioning director at OneBrand Group, runs his own blog – www.customerfirst.typepad.com – and believes that B2B companies are simply not ready to address the issues brought up by the medium.
Graham argues that before the conversation about creating a corporate blog should happen, brands need to examine their relationship with customers and their attitude to marketing communications.
“In our experience, blogs are simply not on the radar of B2B marketers. Some of these are very large organisations; we’re talking multi-billion dollar corporations. For a lot of these people customer-centric marketing is alien. Blogging is so far down the track.”
For Graham, B2B’s struggle with blogs is emblematic of a bigger problem within B2B marketing. He argues that blogging has created a climate whereby customers expect “immediacy, interaction and relevance. B2B companies do not have the resources, in terms of people or money, to match B2C marketing departments. The result of this is that predominantly B2B’s focus is on the product, not the service and certainly not the customer.”
In Graham’s estimation, “the value of the debate is not about blogging per se; it is about the need for a change of attitude. Blogging merely provides a context for that discussion.”
A brilliant PR opp
Opinion may be divided as to whether brands should ever, or can ever be in a position to create their own corporate blogs, but this doesn’t mean that B2B brands can simply turn their backs on the issue.
The proliferation of blogs means that brands have to treat them as they would any other medium. As the examples of Apple and Dell demonstrate, blogs can exert a powerful influence and often take on a life apart from the Internet. The Guardian, following its September redesign, now has a regular digest of blog headlines and unique stories often bleed through into other media.
Managing blogs is much less a marketing issue than a PR one. Cannell of Edelman Interactive Solutions, maintains that blogs really are the domain of the PR consultant rather than marketing. “The medium might be different but what hasn’t changed is the relations part of the public and media relations role,” he says.
Howell couldn’t agree more. She is adamant that responsibility sits directly within PR. “It is just one tool in the toolbox of digital, online public relations. Even if your company isn’t particularly comfortable with blogging, you still need to be able to monitor blogs and occasionally contribute in some way, or react in a particular way should something go wrong, or if your brand is being kicked about on a blog. This is basic crisis management and reputation management. Who’s been doing that for years, irrespective of the medium? PR!”
This talk of crisis management and threats to share prices can make blogs sound like something that pose huge threats to the brand and the company’s reputation. In truth, blogs can be incredibly useful to the brand.
Seventy per cent of those people who are online use Google. This is something that, according to Howell, makes the case for working with blogs irrefutable. “When you look at this stat you have to recognise that search is hugely important for reaching the majority of your customers. Having a presence on blogs, getting that crucial independent third party endorsement, means that you are visible. If you’re not featured on blogs, which now feature on the first, second and third page of search results, your brand is simply not going to be seen.”
If the main benefit is visibility, the second is audibility. Getting your brand onto a blog means that you can present the human face of your business, the side that Graham feels B2B brands are not best suited to demonstrate.
“You get an opportunity to present the real side of your business,” says Howell, “the side that is about customer care, about listening to your client base, the side that is open and honest.”
Working with blogs, pitching your brand’s story to bloggers and maintaining and managing your company’s reputation among blogs, is closely allied to the ways in which public relations works in the offline world, although as Cannell iterates there are key differences.
If you build relationships with blogs and your brand is able to score a hit with a blog, the impact can be significant. Layfield recounts an experience his organisation – The Lounge – recently had with www.phatgnat.typepad.com, a blog that focuses on corporate and social responsibility.
“We were featured [positively] in a story on this B2B blog, which is run by a guy that I have never met or spoken to. People go to his site because he has a great reputation and people respect his opinion,” he explains.
The future in B2B
It is clear that blogs can have a huge impact on brands, and that the main responsibility for managing a brand’s exposure and relationship with blogs sits with PR. It is also clear that B2B brands haven’t embraced the power of blogs fully, and that some aren’t best placed to fully realise this power due to B2B’s traditional reliance of marketing products rather than service or customer benefits.
What is less clear is how B2B might rise to these challenges and how blogs might evolve.
“I think blogging is the thing that will drag B2B brands into finally having a good web presence. After all, what we’re essentially talking about here are very good, well-maintained websites,” says Howell.
“Blogging will force B2B brands into actually having a conversation with their customers, their prospective customers and make these brands finally realise that they have to present a human side to their operations.”
This is something that Graham at OneBrand Group concurs with. He doesn’t think that blogs will necessarily resemble what we currently think of as traditional blogs, but he is optimistic that B2B brands will embrace the medium and rise to the challenges of immediacy, honesty and entering into a dialogue with customers.
“The B2B community has to take up these challenges and I think they will,” Graham says. “B2B marketing is emerging; it is becoming more customer-oriented and more human. As long as communication becomes more important and the reliance on the product more recessive, blogs will increasingly become associated with successful companies.”
