The Not Surprising Failure of Corporate Blogging

A report published in the run-up to the December holidays revealed that corporate blogs and brand social network profiles have not gained the trust of traditional information sources such as newspapers, Internet portals and personal blogs (Forrester Research, free with required login).

In fact, corporate blogs and corporate social network profiles came in at the bottom of the scale, with just 16% and 18% of consumers putting any trust in them, which ranked them as even less trusted than direct mail and message boards. As of last November, according to SocialText, only 12.8%, or 64 Fortune 500 business were blogging, but thousands of smaller companies have launched blogs to communicate directly with various stakeholder communities.

But what is behind this striking lack of trust in U.S. brand blogs? One key reason is that consumers recognize typical online brand communication efforts (Web sites, blogs, social networking pages) are but extensions of corporate marketing efforts and have one goal, “to push products and services to consumers.” In fact, an earlier Forrester study of Fortune 500 blogs founds this to be the case.

Corporate Blog / Consumer Disconnect
So what digital communications do consumers rely on in this age of shattered trust in the institutional landscape? Good old word-of-mouth (WOM) is king, the essence of peer-to-peer communications, especially in the form of email from friends (77% trust rating -Forrester again), followed by consumer reviews, (60%) followed by portals/search engines (50%).

The corporate blog disconnect with consumers originates with brands that make the mistake of blogging about what they know best: themselves, rather than heeding the ubiquitous online marketing mantra, “join the conversation,” in a candid and open dialogue that puts consumers’ interests first. The road to consumer engagement (read: brand loyalty) with a brand begins with an enlightened brand management team that desires to meet their customer’s ever-rising expectations.

So with corporate blogs largely discredited, what can marketers do to engage their customer base in an honest conversation? If your company or clients are considering launching a blog, these two steps will help you successfully begin the process

1. Monitor the ongoing conversation
Before you do anything, tune in to the online conversation about your company, products, people, even if you don’t like what you hear. Keep tabs on what is being said and be ready to respond to both positive and negative discussions. Only then can you constructively engage those who are talking about you, without arguing, on their blogs and sites as well as in your own blog and forums.

To monitor the conversation:
Twitter- Use Summize to monitor Twitter chat. Set up a search for your company or products through an RSS results feed to your reader.

Blogs – Conduct regular searches of Technorati and Google Blog Search to keep tabs on key issues in your sector.

Comments – Keep track of posted comments with a service like BackType. Then be ready to respond directly.

Forums – BoardTracker keeps tabs on thousands of leading forums and alerts you when someone posts about your company or product.

Wikipedia – Check in on your Wikipedia page occasionally (if you don’t have one- write it today) to see if anyone has made objectionable edits that require rewriting or a response.

News -Use Google Alerts to watch mainstream news sources, blogs, videos, and news groups for news of your company and of competitors.

2. Content is King

When you are ready to open an online dialog, take a step back from the features / benefits talk. A good blog post requires an honest perspective; a fresh point of view, some provocative thinking about an issue, trend, or technology; and real news.

Such posts generate the most links throughout the blogosphere, which will drive interested parties back to your blog. But readers won’t return if they find stale content so it is most important to add new posts frequently.

To successfully feed your company blog fresh content requires the contributions of a diverse group of employees so enlist as large a corps of bloggers as possible by reaching out well beyond the ranks of the PR and marketing departments.

Len Stein ([email protected]) is president of Visibility Public Relations.