Dimanche 12 mars 2006
Ø Book: Wright Jeremy (2006), “Blog marketing: the revolutionary new way to increase sales, build your brand, and get exceptional results”, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0072262516, p.237-268
Jeremy Wright evokes the different axes that companies should focus on:
- Always think about traffic (links with other blogs, search engines, marketing actions)
- Build and maintain close relations with bloggers (take into consideration their comments/ use a human voice)
- Try to establish a blog community (ideas and interest)
In my point of view, the two objectives are hardly achievable if a corporate blog does not benefit from a high traffic rate. If a corporate blog links to many blogs, it will probably be linked back and it will then benefit from a high visibility. Moreover, the logic of search engines such as Google is to put on the first page the blogs which are the most linked from other blogs or websites.
Ø Survey: Backbonemedia (2004), “Corporate blogging: is it worth the hype?”, p.65-66
Compiling the answers of the survey, the authors came to the following conclusions:
- Trackbacks are very important. They inform a blogger that another blog makes a comment on one of its post. It is a very good mean to build up a community and to know which kind of blogs refers to its posts.
- Tags help the readers to find the information they seek more easily
- It is necessary to provide an email link or a contact page
I do agree on the two firsts points which are about the same that what is written in the previous article but I do not agree on the fact that it is necessary to provide an email link. I believe that a good corporate blog substitutes itself to emails as bloggers can directly post their thoughts and make them available to everyone. Moreover, people seem to be fed up with emails which have been overused and which do not allow an efficient collaborative work.
Ø Book: Nonnenmacher François (2006), “Blogueur d’entreprise”, Groupe Eyrolles, ISBN 2708133292, p.159-162
This chapter provides basic advices: authenticity, spontaneousness, opening, transparency, reactivity, humility. Moreover, posts must be signed up by the authors and should only contain the truth. The company should also publish a “moderation charter”, so that commentators do not push the limits of what they can write. On the other hand, the company is highly encouraged not to remove a post without explanations.
As far as I am concerned, companies should embrace those basic advices for two main raisons: firstly, as they divert the blogs from their original use they have to respect the blogs’ essence. Secondly, companies will have to appear more human to customers if they want to build up strong relationships with them.
Ø Article: Scoble Robert (February 2003), “The corporate weblog manifesto”, http://radio.weblogs.com
Robert Scoblle gives 20 points to consider before corporate blogging. Most of them are similar to what as been written before except:
- Underpromise and over deliver: bloggers will then appreciate the positive gap between what was written and what happened.
- If the writer is in a bad moon, he might not blog.
- If you write about competitors, do it in a nice way
I strongly disapprove what is written above. The first point can be compared to Disneyland which tell their clients there is a 45 minutes queue whereas they perfectly know that customers will wait 30 minutes; if companies apply this method to corporate blogging they will for sure loose credit towards their customers. Moreover, a blog has to be fed regularly; if not, there is a risk to loose customers. Last but not least, companies should always tell the truth: if a competitor has a very bad product, she has to say it.
Ø Survey: Edelman & Intelliseek (Fall 2005), “Taking from the inside out: the rise of employee bloggers”, p.14-19
Employees could divulgate private information or inappropriate contents. In order to avoid this kind of nuisances, companies should craft a corporate blog guideline. It should contain the following highlights:
- The writer is responsible for her/his posts
- She/he must know the risks of providing trade secrets, confidential information or proprietary information.
- It is forbidden to write obscenities and defamation
- She/he should blog during their free time except if it is part of her/his job responsibilities
This guideline is the same thing that what was named the “moderation charter” two articles above. I really encourage every company to write such a guideline: whereas people engage their own responsibility on their private blog, it is another story with a corporate blog. If one single person out of all the employees writes obscenities on a corporate blog, it is the whole company which will be judged.
Ø Book: Wright Jeremy (2006), “Blog marketing: the revolutionary new way to increase sales, build your brand, and get exceptional results”, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0072262516, p.296
In his book, Jeremy Wright insists on the necessity to provide advises to the employees and to inform them on the boundaries not to cross. He illustrates it with a concrete example: Thomas Nelson blog terms and conditions. A board of employees is in charge of promoting blogging within the company and of maintaining the company’s interests. One of their tasks is to make sure that employees who create their own blog respect the company’s guideline. If they do not, the company will stop linking their blog to the company’s website.
This strategy is based on what we call a “blog aggregator site”; it allows the company to increase its visibility and to communicate differently to the public. Whereas the previous article only deals with a blog guideline, Jeremy Wright goes one step further by arguing that companies should also advise the employees. I think that those two points are complementary and highly optimize the quality of the employees’ blogs.
Par Cédric Firmin
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Publié dans : Companies versus Corporate blogging
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