Stop The Blog Buzz

I've been receiving quite a few comments on my previous postings about corporate blogs. It seems there is some bewilderment as to what I mean when I say that corporate blogs don't work. Many point out that major companies like Microsoft and Novell run blogs that are quite successful (i.e. have massive readership).

Let me clarify: I don't question the success of these web pages. What I do question however is whether they are really blogs!

Take the Novell Open PR blog for instance. The blog is quite new (launched a week ago) and from where I'm sitting it simply looks like the company discovered another channel for communicating to the press. Here Novell just shoves out on web whatever it doesn't wanna put in a paper press release (it's cheaper and it's okay to misspell ;-)) This is not blogging. It's pure web marketing.

Another example is this so called blog from the company Campaign Monitor. Yup, they call it a blog and even made a nice header in Photoshop - but let's be honest here - isn't it basically a newsletter?

So what's wrong with corporate blogs you ask. Well, the term »blog« apparently has such a buzz to it that it seems every company just gotta have one. Thus they dress up their press releases, FAQ's, newsletters, support-pages and what not to look like blogs. It reminds me of the ipod design phenomenon: When the ipod first became tres cool a lot of other products suddenly acquired the same white surface, the same rounded edges and so forth... But ipods they were not!

Technorati: Media |Advertising |Weblogs

Comments

[Jacob Bøtter]

I do not believe you can categorize corporate blogs as black and white as you do. A corporate blog might not be a blog like the way GM is blogging, but could take form in a personal blog with a connection to an employer. For example, do you consider your own blog genuine? Then you have your case right there, you are blogging and creating credibility (hopefully) for your employer right now. Right here. The way I see it, that's a corporate blog aswell.

[Henrik Harsbo]

Hi Jacob

First of all I think your comment raises this question: If a blog is not initiated or applauded by an organization can it then really be called a corporate blog? I don't think so.

If I understand you correctly you also say that the mere fact that I'm blogging strengthens my employers brand. I don't agree. Most readers of my blog wont even know where I work unless they choose to click the sidebar link called "job". My blog is not paid for by my work and it's not initiated on my boss' request :-) Furthermore I hardly ever use my work experience as an example in the blog. This is not a blog about my job but a blog about my interest: communication on the web.

I don't think the fact that I'm blogging gives the place I work stronger credibility than the fact that I'm a responsible driver.

[Jacob Bøtter]

I see your point, and you're probably right as long as the term corproate blog is in use. I am not that fond of self-coined terms like this, as their definition seems to be made up by people's assumptions.

As you state you write about communication on the web, I don't see how that doesn't relate to your employer? You working as a web editor and blogging besides that shows that you know what blogs are all about and how to use them. If that doesn't relate to your job, I believe your job definition is lacking. Or at least your title.

I found out immediately when I entered your blog that you worked at HK, since clicking your name sent me to their website.

Take another example, CPH127.com that I co-founded some months ago with some friends. The other two founders works at the Danish Design Centre, but the blog is not affiliated with the Centre, but everytime we get mentioned somewhere people state that this is a blog by some people at the Danish Design Centre. By doing that we add credibility to the centre, if they like it or not. Robert Scoble is another example of a blogger starting out writing about what interests him and suddenly becoming one of the best marketing campaigns Microsoft has ever made. There's tons of these examples out there, but you will not find them if you keep living in a black-n-white cave thinking that if it doesn't fit into your dictionary it doesn't exisit - that's just too vague a statement.

There's also a lot of weblogs out there that has been initiated by the companies themselves and still very successful. GM is a good case, but not the only good case. If you don't believe there's anything out there, you've probably not done any research other than making assumptions on self-coined terms.

Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming you for any of this, but try to open up your eyes, then you'll see that there's a lot more to this than just the term "corproate weblogs".

[Hans Henrik]

Jacob - You're right on this one. Last Autumn I wrote a Master Thesis on how to use Weblogs as Catalyst for Radical Innovation.

There are much more in just talking ABOUT blogging - it's about "Thriving the Conversation" - http://www.cph127.com/cph127/2005/09/thriving_design.html

All the best
Hans Henrik

[Henrik Harsbo]

Thanks for the credit, Jacob, I really would have liked to have coined the term "corporate blogging". But I haven't :-) It's a term that you'll find referenced many places on the web. Try looking here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging#Corporate

here: http://www.corporateblogging.info

...and here: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/02/26.html

:-)...

I do understand why you would say that my blog has an influence on the credibility of my employer. But -- and here's my point -- you can say that about most things I do in life; from the things I say at social gatherings to the type of groceries I buy at the super market. That's simply not very interesting from a communicative point of view. You have to look at the goal of my discourse, Jacob, and my goal is not to make HK more credible.

Yes, I write about communication on my blog. But I'm in no way writing about or selling the product of HK and that's what's important here. The selling aspect. This is what differentiates blogs like mine from corporate blogs.

Your blog cph127 is clearly a corporate blog in the sense that you are indeed trying to sell a product... namely the product of you. Being consultants you guys have to be out there to entice the next potential customer. Nothing wrong with that. But this also means that your blog faces the same problem as Scobelizer and the GM blog: The problem of corporate truth versus the actual truth!

I'm so dead sure that the first law of Robert Scoble is also the first to get squashed when the shit hits the fan on any corporate blog:
"Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway," writes Scoble.

It's pretty costless to write in a blog manifesto, but so hard to do in real life. How easy would it be for you to admit on your blog that one of your immediate competitors make way better web designs than your company????

- and then we're back at my main conclusion: Corporate blogs don't work simply because they are... corporate!

If you say that your company is better branded by the fact that you're blogging so be it. Personally I think that your time is much better spent in your company building the brand from there and listening to the market conversation (on other blogs for instance) about your product.

PS: I'm not saying that blogs can't promote companies succesfully. Want to see a blog that's not corporate but does great marketing for a company anyhow? Check out: http://www.slavetotarget.com

By the way thanks for your comments and for keeping the debate alive.

[Jacob Bøtter]

First of all you misunderstood my last comment a little bit, I am sorry if I wasn't clear enough. By self-coined I didn't mean to imply that you coined the term, but that a group of people has and that there's no strict definition on a corporate blog. Just as less as there's a definition on what a blog is (does it have to offer RSS? Does it need archives? Does it need comments? Does it need it trackbacks? etc.). I am not saying that's a bad thing, but I would be careful trying to say what a corporate blog really is. You say it's about selling and has to be started by an organization. But where do you get that definition from? I am pretty sure it's made out of assumptions, try to be careful when doing so - you might step on someones toes.

Second, CPH127 is not about selling, we are not offering any kind of consulting and if someone called us to do such, we'd refuse - that's not what we do. We try to be the place where you can discuss design, innovation and leadership. It's just a coincidence that two of the founders work at the Danish Design Centre. But it's not by accident that a lot of credibility is added when CPH127 gets mentioned somewhere and the connection to DDC is implied. Nor is it by accident that the upcoming INDEX: conference gets a lot of buzz because we mention it a couple of times on our blog.

In my world, which might be very far from where you are in a big organization, business is not about selling. Business is about creating value, and that value might not always cost something. By writing tips on my personal blog I bring value to my readers, some of them happen to be my clients, and they then get some knowledge they might have paid for.

You mentioned Robert Scoble's manifesto, which is great but I'd prefer to use the Cluetrain Manifesto since it's no so blog-focused and a lot more conversation-focused. Markets are conversations, not blogs. Blogs is just another technology and technology is not interesting in this debate, nor are blogs. But the value created by blogs and the conversations within them are very interesting. But if you can't tell the truth and link to a better competitor (we do that all the time at CPH127, linking to IDEO, livework etc.), then it's not the blog that's your problem. Then that's business model and your product, if that's shitty, oh well, your corporate blog will not be candor nor will it be good.

I have a brand new example for you, lawyer J. Craig Williams writes a lawblog at mayitpleasethecourt.com and recently said that he has gotten one million dollar in client referrals through his blog. That's also corporate blogging, and that's damn succesful if you ask me. Read all about it here: http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/blog/2005/09/19/the-million-dollar-blog

As you can read I don't agree with you, but thanks for writing a great blog, and whether you like it or not, I actually think much better of HK knowing that one of their employees are this well-informed. I am not a design consultant by the way, I work professionally with weblogs in both corporate context but also in a much wider sense. Give me a call (60802401) if you want to elaborate more on that, that - my knowledge - I am willing to sell ;-)

[Henrik Harsbo]

Hmm, you're right Jacob, we're probably never going to agree on this issue. But I enjoy the discussion, so here goes...

I stil think most blogs from (or about) companies are little more than camouflaged marketing. One has to perceive everything being said on such a website as tainted. You would be very wrong to consider a blog like Scoble's a friendly rant about software. It's not. It's Microsoft marketing and if it wasn't, my guess is that Scoble would soon be out of a job.

Marketing is okay. I wont hoist the red flag on marketing. Just don't hide it in the guise of a chatty blog!

Business is not about selling. It's about creating value, you say. Well, I'm sure that at the end of the day the value you're creating somehow has to pay for dinner. So when you remove the smooth business lingo, I wonder whether that value you're talking about isn't pretty much based on a good old "sell" after all ;-)

You also claim that it's easy to link to a competitor. We do it all the time, you say. I would like to be as bold as to reformulate your statement: Yes, it's easy to link to competitors as long as it doesn't hurt core business! When the going gets tough and someone wants advice on one of your main products, there's no linking to competitors, I'm sure!

And then there's the lawyer who made a million. Gotta admire the guy. Well done and all that. But I still consider his blog marketing.

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a great book. I do believe the market is a conversation. In that respect there's nothing wrong with a company conversing with its customers. My advice: Just do it in a plain and open style. Don't blur the communication in a "we're not selling, we're just creating value"-style blog.

[Jacob Bøtter]

First of all I do not consider Scoble to be a good example at all, he works as an evangelist, and whether he evangelizes on his blog or on the street chatting with fellow US-citizens, doesn't make much change for me. But Scoble does link to competitors all the time, remember the post about the iPod and how bad Windows Media Player is?

I think we've got some different views on marketing, from my point of view it is a paid-effort started by a company in order to sell something. Who said a corporate weblog had to be about selling a product? I am not saying that a good business doesn't make money, but if that's all it does, then there's something wrong. For example I see a lot of weblogs dealing with subjects that could be considered an added value to a product they had bought, for example the whole iPod community. But none of those iPod bloggers think about selling, they are just evangelizing a product they like. See http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/ for more on that.

I think completely disagree on the link part. If you can't link to one of your competitors that must mean that their product is better, but what's that got to do with the weblog? Ofcourse if your product is shit you won't link to a competitor, but if you consider it better why not go ahead and let the client choose for himself what he thinks is best? He's going to find out anyway. That's the whole Scoble-point as I see it. I don't see how you can defend not linking to your competitor if you're better - and you better be.

Why do you call it blurring? If what you write is candid and true, and not an effort that has been paid for by your employer, then why call it marketing?

Otherwise great debate - keep it going :-)

[Henrik Harsbo]

I think you misunderstand me, Jacob. I am precisely advocating for the type of blogging that is customer driven, like in the Ipod case. In my book that is prime marketing.

You can check my latest blog entry at http://www.getit.typepad.com if you want to know more about where I stand on that issue :-)

When looking at company websites and credibility I think it is important to look at the things that companies don't tell their customers.

Apple for instance don't tell customers at their site that if they want a computer for gaming they shouldn't buy an Apple since there are more games for the pc. Potential customers have to rely on the blogosphere, most likely the pc-fans blogs, or news groups even to get a hold of that little fact.

Another thing I don't see is Apple telling potential Ipod buyers that if they don't want to be tied to Itunes and a fairly limited number of file formats they're really better off buying a player from a different manufacturer!

Apple is a business and as such it has to make money - not create value! The create value-thing is someting that the company pr-department comes up with afterwards as a nice little eufemism for »making money« ;-)

The fact is that in most cases companies wont point you to competing products. Not from their company web sites, not from their blogs and not from their 800 numbers.

I wonder if we can agree on this Jacob... that customer driven blogs tend to give a fuller picture of a product than a traditional corporate blog?