Shaping a Message Through Blogs

I was on a panel discussion today hosted by Burson-Marsteller with Om Malik, Chris Nolan (no relation, but seriously what are the odds being on a panel with someone who has the same last name), Duncan Martell, and Fred Vogelstein. The topic was how blogs are reshaping corporate communications. I was the only person not from professional media, and the audience was predominately corporate communications professionals and PR types.

What struck me about the discussion is this:

1) despite all of the press, very few of these communication people are actively reading blogs and RSS feeds. Even fewer are actually writing blogs... 2 hands went up when the question was asked

2) the tendency is to boil down entire groups of blogs to the top few that are widely read, which ignores the greater mass

3) there's a fixation with blogs versus the media. The media business is just that, it's a business that is going to have to evolve in order to compete effectively in the future with electronic media. It's not an ideology and it's not going away.

My advice to professional marketing communication people is to get engaged with blogs now by reading and observing. Learn the etiquette and patterns before deciding to tackle strategy for dealing with blogs.

The creed of the professional communications executive over the years has been to control the message. Get over it because their is no chance you can do that in today's world. At best you can shape a message by guiding and honestly responding to blog content where appropriate.

Putting press releases out as blog material isn't going to work either. I know this won't surprise many people, but NOBODY READS PRESS RELEASES ANYMORE. In fact, in many of the companies we are invested in we don't bother putting out releases on PR Newswire anymore, they just go up on the website and maybe somebody searches on it, but even if they do it's not like a PR is going to be taken seriously.

PR firms should also hire people to interface with search engines (Om had a great title for this, "Search Engine Optimization Specialist"). I get probably 25% of my traffic through search engines, and the example I used today was a search on "United Airlines Customer Service" yields a really interesting set of results. The official UAL site is the first 2 results, followed by an entire page of blog entries from people who have had terrible customer service experiences with UAL, including my own post titled "customer (dis)service". Hell, I even pageranked higher than the Federal government's own Aviation Consumer Protection Homepage!

The next observation has to do with how marketing communications people actually communicate with their markets. Historically this has been in the form of formal scripted communications delivered through talking heads or soundbites from executives. This just doesn't fly anymore, the tech industry in particular is very saavy about this model, and they want more. Companies need to communication honestly, brutally honest in some cases, and most of all they need to humanize communication. As Scoble would say, if someone has a better product than you, well just say it because it's going to come out anyways. If you have a misstep, just admit it and move on. Anyone who thinks they can stonewall controversy by denying it exists would do well to study the Krypotnite Bic Pen case study and how it cost them $10 million and untold brand value.

Yes the blogsphere is too big to ever hope to manage, but you can break down the problem into dimensions. It's pretty easy to identify a list of blogs that have interest in what you are promoting, and it's equally easy to assign some "authority index" to them by using Technorati/Feedster/Bloglines to see how much link traffic they generate. Blog writers, like myself, are also pretty open to hearing from companies. We are starting to see new companies emerge that analyze blogs for specific positive/negative references, and as they mature professional marketing types will have even more tools for reaching bloggers.

PR types don't have to abandon traditional media, but they certainly need to be a lot more agile when it comes to blogs. MSM is not going away, but their business model is being forced to change as electronic media takes their readers and their revenues. Ignoring blogs today will only serve to put you at a disadvantage in the future when strategies are developed to manage communications and message through them. Lastly, proceed cautiously at first, be an observer for a while because making mistakes with blogs can be fatal, or at least put you in a deep hole that you'll need to dig yourself out of.

Comments

[Richard Rodger]

"what are the odds being on a panel with someone who has the same last name?"

Probably higher than you think:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox

[jeff]

same birthday I can see (per the Wiki page) given that there are 366 possible dates that someone can be born on... however the odds of last name are considerably taller.

[Jay Lipe]

There's alot of great stuff here, but the thing that stands out most to me is your comment about how the professional communications executive can no longer control the message.

In my work with small businesses I try to get them to understand how the control has shifted back to the buyer's hands. Those small businesses who can enable opt-in dialogues with buyers in this new environment will ultimately reap customers. But you have to give the buyer control.

Looks like control is shifting to the consumer in a bunch of different ways.

Jay Lipe

[Andrew Lark]

Great comments Jeff. Just finished a couple days at the NewComm Blog Uni in Napa. Communicators are just starting to fully get with the social networking revolution.

Having seen the data on release click throughs from the newswires and also company news sites, you are statistically wrong - people do in mass read news releases. They also are a 'technical' communications tool. Where you could be right is that mediums like the blog are steadily increasing as a news desimination and triangulation vehicle.

[Jeremy Pepper]

I just came back from presenting at the NewComm Forum - where I was fortunate enough to see Lark speak - and some of the largest PR firms had sent participants to the Forum, and there were also internal corp comm team members that had come to learn how to work with the blogosphere. Not against, but with.

It all comes down to audiences.