Marketing Ninja

Blogging is gradually gaining acceptance as a legitimate form of news reporting, editorializing, and fueling discussion.

Make sure you read the introduction to Blogging for Business.

Blogging Myth #1: Media Organizations Do Not Take Blogging Seriously

Over the past couple of years we’ve seen blogs paving their way into the mainstream media.

In 2004, shortly before the United States presidential election, a popular conservative political blog called Little Green Footballs broke the CBS Forged Document story, which resulted in long-time CBS newsman Dan Rather’s dismissal from the network.

Blogging has enabled private individuals to leverage themselves against the media and popular perception in ways that were not possible until quite recently.

So if a private individual like the proprietor of Little Green Footballs can have an impact on American Presidential Politics, imagine the impact an organization can have on its customers with blogging!

On April 16th, 2002, The New York Sun made its first appearance on the newsstands of New York City. The NY Sun was the first full-fledged news paper to have ever grown out of a one man blog. To quote Fox News briefly here:

April 16th, 2002

In June of 2000, Brooklyn journalist Ira Stoll started SmarterTimes.com, a little site with a big mission: to expose the errors and bias of the New York Times. The NYT is an excellent newspaper in a city full of excellent newspapers — the New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, etc. But as the required paper for opinion makers and policy wonks and high-end consumers from Martha’s Vineyard to Santa Monica, it needed a watchdog. Stoll assigned himself that position and soon had thousands of readers.

His online work got the attention of media mogul Conrad Black and ten New York investors. Today, the New York Sun rolled off the presses. Former Wall Street Journal staffer Seth Lipsky is editor. Stoll is managing editor.

It took one man less than two years to go from running a one-man blog to competing with the New York Times. If that doesn’t demonstrate the power that blogs can have, I don’t know what does.

Large news organizations themselves have gotten into the act and started up a number of their own blogs. Here’s a quick list of a few blogs owned and operated by mainstream media organizations:

• The Blotter (ABC News)
• MSNBC Blogs
• post.blog (The Washington Post)
• Pogue’s Posts (The New York Times)
• The Corner (National Review)

Why Media Organizations Use Blogs

Since I couldn’t put it any better, I’m going to quote Movable Type’s piece on the benefits of using blogs for media organizations:

Many of the first organizations to adopt blogs have been in the media industry, because the media business is always looking for faster and more effective ways to share information and entertainment with their audiences. From the largest media organizations in the world to global television networks to hometown newspapers and independent publishers, blogging is an easy way to extend your reach. Even better, readership of blogs has been steadily increasing, so average readers have become familiar with the medium.

Myth #2: Major Corporations Do Not Take Blogging Seriously

In this day and age, major corporations cannot afford to ignore what authoritative bloggers are saying about their products and services.

If you’re running a company that produces high tech gadgets such as mp3 players, flat-panel televisions, or video games then a good review from high tech gadget blogs such as Engadget, Gizmodo, or Ars Technia instantly highlights your product to an audience that already has a passionate interest in your area of technology. If your company gets a good review, you are going to see sales. Readers of those blogs, if they also like the product, will write on their own blogs about your product and hype for your product will expand virally.

On the other hand, if a negative rumor makes it way onto blogging sites such as The Consumerist, an advocate for shoppers rights, it can damage your organization’s image and may actually drive away customers. Take a look at their most recent article on a Starbucks public relations blunder and remember that hundreds of thousands of people, many of them Starbucks customers, subscribe to The Consumerist and read it every day.

While Starbucks may not publicly respond to this article, I guarantee you that they will take measures to prevent the blunder from occuring again in the future. Time heals all wounds, including bottom lines, but if more customers keep getting mistreated after they get scalded by Starbucks employees the damage will take its toll.

The Geek Squad Lesson: How Ignoring Bloggers Can Tarnish Your Business

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at what happened to Geek Squad when The Consumerist stumbled upon an occurring pattern of frequent abuse by Geek Squad employees. Let’s take a look at the top 20 Google Search results for just “Geek Squad” and try and imagine what a new customer would think upon reading these:

• Home – Geek Squad. Use Us
• Pricing – Geek Squad. Use Us
• Geek Squad Computer Services
• Geek Squad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Geek Squad: Geek Squad Insider Speaks Out – Consumerist
• Best Buy: Geek Squad Gouges – Consumerist
• Digg – GeekSquad Troubleshooting Guide Revealed!!
• Geek Squad UK
• Geek Squad – IdeaFestival
• YouTube – Computer Repair Fraud
• Geek Squad Computer Support
• Geek Squad Canada
• City Pages – The Blotter – May 2007 Archives
• Geek Squad hacked dead porn star’s computer
• cbs2.com – Geek Sued For Peeking At Woman In Shower Via Video
• Geek Squad UK
• Is GeekSquad a Sham? ~ The Chris Pirillo Show
• Flickr: Photos tagged with geeksquad
• Boing Boing: Geek Squad jerk caught swiping porn from customer’s …
• Best Buy’s Geek Squad: Conquest of Branding Over Competence …

Nine of the top twenty search results for just the NAME of the corporation are devastatingly horrible press pieces for Geek Squad, and that’s not including the Geek Squad Wikipedia entry which also mentions the claims against Geek Squad by The Consumerist.

Geek Squad did get around to reacting to The Consumerist when Geek Squad CEO Robert Stevens emailed The Consumerist asking for the name of the employee who was caught red-handed stealing porn from a computer owned by The Consumerist, but it was too late. The damage had been done already.

So when it comes to protecting your organization’s public relations image, remember the lessons of Geek Squad, who ignored and the blogging community and was subsequently tarnished by it.

Bad news by its incendiary nature spreads faster and further for companies that don’t have a loyal cult user base like Apple Computers; having corporate blogs that actively engage customers in constructive and honest discussion will ultimately prove to build trust with your customers and subsequent brand loyalty. When bad press rears its head, an established reputation as an honest broker in the blogging community is one of the best defenses your corporation can have.

Corporations Use Blogs to Create Interest in their Company:

Many major corporations use blogs to generate interest in their products, get feedback from their customers, and to generate sales. Here’s a list of a few fortune 500 company blogs that do just that:

• Edison’s Desk (General Electric Research)
• Randy’s Journal (Boeing)
• Direct2Dell (Dell)
• IT@Intel (Intel)
• Wells Fargo Blogs
• MSDN Blogs (Microsoft)
• The Official Google Blog

Further Reading:

• Global PR Blog Week 1.0 – Steve Outing on Blogging’s Impact
• Marketing on the Verge: Scoble, Brill, and blogging’s internal impact
• Helium: The impact of blogs on the news industry

 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!