Netimperative published an interesting article today on the use of blogs by the corporate community in the UK. According to a recent survey conducted by SixApart and Lewis PR, only 11% of CEOs and communications directors from UK companies have developed either a personal or corporate blog. That is despite 43% agreeing that blogs will become a major source of information in the future.
Being fairly new to the blogosphere myself, I'm still discovering the existing online conversations I want to contribute to. And as I mentioned in my first post, public opinion can now be influenced like no time before by individuals. Customers, competitors, suppliers, journalists and employees are all blogging. So the corporate message has become much more difficult to control as individuals are empowered like never before.
A recent example. Matthew Peterson was one of hundreds of thousands of consumers who had bought a new iPod Nano following its launch. But he soon discovered the Nanos he and many others had bought had display screens which damaged easily, often within hours of purchase. So Matthew set up a site (flawedmusicplayer.com - now taken down) as a means of seeking the comments of others who had similar experiences and to pressure Apple into acknowledging and dealing with the problem. Within days, his site and numerous other blogs had literally thousands of comments from people commenting on these problems. Traditional media also picked up on the story giving it even greater prominence. In response, Apple acknowledged the problem saying there was a "vendor quality problem" (and not a design issue) and stated that it affected less than 0.1% of shipped products. Apple also offered to provide those affected with a replacement free of charge. In this example, Apple responded quickly and extinguished what could have been a PR disaster.
So organisations are putting themselves at significant reputational and commercial risk if they do not monitor and respond to these online conversations in an agile and positive manner. And these conversations are happening today, with or without the participation of the organisations they may concern. So there is a great opportunity, perhaps an imperative, for organisations to influence these by actively participating.
Just last week, Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm in New York converted their corporate website into a blog - Fred Wilson, one of the partners, explains why here. This may be an extreme approach for most but there are some valuable lessons to be learned.
Lewis PR recently held a breakfast seminar to discuss the impact of blogging on the corporate community and provides some thoughts on the dos and don't of creating a corporate blog. You can view the presentations here - well worth taking a look at.
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, which may help to crystallize my view.
