RESUME
Cet article s’attache à analyser le phénomène des blogs d’entreprises qui ont récemment vu le jour en France ; il s’interroge quant à leur(s) rôle(s) au sein de la stratégie globale de communication. La balance entre profits espérés et risques potentiels s’avère aléatoire puisque cet outil, détourné de sa fonction première, obéit à des règles informelles encore mal définies.
Aussi, cet article tend à définir les caractéristiques de ces blogs afin d’en mesurer leur pertinence et leur bien-fondé pour les entreprises. Cependant, des illustrations concrètes démontrent qu’une connaissance approfondie des blogs n’en garantie pas toujours le succès. Il convient donc de se demander si les entreprises doivent créer ou non leur propre blog ?
SUMMARY
This article focuses on analysing the phenomenon of the corporate blogs which have recently come to France; it intends to understand the role(s) they play within the global communication strategy. The balance between expected benefices and potential risks is random as this tool, diverted from its original use, obeys to informal rules which are not yet clearly established.
Moreover, this article defines the characteristics of those blogs in order to measure their pertinence and cogency for the companies. However, concrete illustrations demonstrate that an in-depth knowledge of the blogs does not always guarantee its success. It is then essential to wonder whether companies should create and develop a corporate blog or not?
I/ Introduction
Regarded as enemies for a while, bloggers are now courted by companies - around 10 corporate blogs in France at the end of 2005 (JDN, 2005) - but these “against nature” connections raise the following legitimate preoccupation: “Corporate blogging: is it worth the hype?” (Backebonemedia, 2004).
Beyond the fact a corporate blog is a revolutionary communication tool (Ezra Palmer, 2005) which has recently generated convincing results for some companies, both the expected benefice-potential risk ratio and the ROI (Return On Investment) remain difficult to be weighed up.
A new “phenomenon”
The term blog (shortened form of web log) was used for the very first time in 1997 by Jorn BARGER. This tool has gained rampant popularity over the past four years and has considerably modified the way to communicate. Indeed, this tool enables multiple users to post easily diaries of their thoughts to a website (displayed in a chronological way); those texts are most of the time enriched with external links and opened to be commented by the readers. According to several sites such as “technorati.com” (a search engine dedicated to blogs), there are more than 30 million blogs world wide and 2.1 billion links into the “blogosphere”. In France, we count 4 million blogs, for an audience of 8 million bloggers (JDN, 2005). The survey (1) we have carried out reveals that 50% of the urban consumers are used to attend to corporate blogs. This craze has recently pushed few companies to set up theirs in France - the pioneers are named “Vous les hommes”, “Le journal de ma peau”, “Inconnue” - whereas they are several hundreds of them in the United States.
Its first success stories
Robert Scoble has become one of the Microsoft’s tech evangelists with his blog scobleizer.wordpress.com that “he feeds without any censure”. Thanks the articles of this Microsoft employee, the company appears less tyrannical and more human today (Courrier International, 2006).
…and its first skids
This phenomenon forces companies not to underestimate the power of each single customer and to respect the fundamental informal rules governed by the blogs.
- A customer has figured out how to open a Kryptonite lock with a mere ballpoint pen and then wrote about it on his blog: the story was spread all over the world (Stefan ENGESETH, 2006).
- Bloggers condemned the blog “Le journal de ma peau” launched by Vichy (JDN, 2005) because they did not consider it as authentic and transparent (no link to the brand – some comments removed – no writer identification).
From a general point of view, companies are nervous about setting up a corporate blog: results can be as highly beneficial as dramatic. A study (Ezra PALMER, 2005) emphasizes that blogs can “burnish brands, generate awareness and open doors to consumers, but also bend Web Traffic, upend organic search results and tarnish a company’s reputation”
II/ Corporate blogs: state of knowledge
To understand before acting
According to “the Hype Cycle of Emerging Technology” (Leo JAMES, 2003), blogs will experience the 5 successive phases: technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity. That is the reason why each company has to clearly understand the environment of the blogs in order to set up theirs at the right period of time: is it a mere fashionable phenomenon? Should we act as pioneers? Or should we wait in order to benefit from the others’ experience?
Moreover, companies are highly advised to deeply analyse the characteristics of this new communication channel and to precisely be aware of the involvement it requires. A good mean of avoiding strategic mistakes when implementing an official corporate blog would be to pre-test a semi-official version. This technique allows companies to better affine their communication strategies and to answer to the following questions stressed in “Blogueur d’entreprise” (François NONNENMACHER, 2006): what to expect from it? Which subjects will be developed? Which kind of blog should be adopted? Who will the readers be? What will be the publication rhythm? Which intellectual property to apply?
The survey “Corporate blogging: is it worth the hype?” (BACKBONEMEDIA, 2004) reveals that the two main companies’ preoccupations before setting up their own blog are: costs in terms of man hours” and “the risk to spread confidential information”.
Which return on investment?
One of the main difficulties copes with the track and the measurement of the ROI (Yaw SCOTT, 2006): this perilous exercise is often subjective. Our survey (1) strengthens this point: 48% of the people interviewed do believe it is impossible do measure it. (23% have no opinion). On the one hand, it is too soon to draw solid conclusions about this phenomenon in term of added value and on the other, it seems complicated to establish a direct economic link. For instance, people can corporate blog instead of meeting customers or suppliers abroad: could a company effectively measure how much money it saves in travelling? When companies provide feedbacks to the bloggers’ comments, could it estimate the impact of this close relationship into the annual results?
Some fundamental rules
To be successful in corporate blogging, the company has to focus on some essential points:
- To be traffic minded in order to improve the blog’s visibility and be ranked in first position on search engines (Jeremy WRIGHT, 2006): a corporate blog has to be linked with other blogs (which might link it back) and must contain key words. From a technical point of view, the use of “trackbacks” is essential: they inform the “blogger” that a blog refers to his. Regarding, the navigation into the corporate blogs, the implementation of “tags” is high recommended as they hep the readers to find the information they seek more easily (BACKBONEMEDIA, 2004).
- To maintain solid relationships with the readers, while establishing a community spirit based upon ideas and interest. Thus, the corporate blog will gain in credibility and will save time in harmonising the contents.
In the introduction, we briefly evoked the fundamental informal rules which govern the perception of the blogs from the net surfers, such as the transparency and the authenticity that Vichy did not embrace (JDN, 2005). François NONNENMACHER (2006) insists on the following complementary notions: spontaneousness, opening, reactivity, humility which are essential. Loic LEMEUR (2006) adds the following notions: sincerity, passion and openness. This is what will make the difference between a good corporate blog and one more x institutional site. Why should companies respect those values? Merely because for a company, the temptation to apply traditional advertising and marketing rules to corporate blogs is high, and especially, it does not work! Ironically, the Blog entry ticket is more complex for a company rather than for an individual. As companies divert the blogs from their original use they have to respect the blogs’ essence. Nevertheless, this is contradictory to the way companies are used to communicate until now: the tendency was to protect itself rather than both to be opened to customers and to appear more “human”.
In order to better apprehend this radical change, some companies have crafted a “moderation charter” or a “guideline”; that Jacques DIGOUT (2006) names a “Blog-Tiquette”, by analogy with the “Netiquette Guidelines” published in 1995 in order to moderate the online behaviour of the net surfers (
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html). Some concrete and interesting examples: Feedster Corporate Blogging Policy, Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines, Plaxo Plublic Internet Communication Policy…It is highly recommended to provide those guidelines on the front end rather than later when an informal corporate blogging rule was not respected. This method should theoretically prevent bloggers from divulging trade secrets, confidential, proprietary or inappropriate information. Everyone may be concerned with those guidelines: employees obviously, but also contractors, agents, supplies and others. According the survey “Talking from the inside out: the rise of employee bloggers” carried out by ELDEMAN & INTELLISEEK (2005), employees should be clearly informed of the risks they incur in case of non-respect of the “blog guideline”.
Shall we take the concrete example of IBM Blogging policy which contains 11 points. Number 2 “You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM” highlights the main problem of employee blogs. According to me, this is clear and understandable from the company’s perspective; but if we take into consideration the bloggers’ minds, there is no doubt that they associate James Snell with IBM, Scoble with Microsoft or Schwartz with Sun…Fredrik Wacka do believe that this is exactly what those companies want but they should make it clearer (www.corporateblogging.info).
We could go even further in this logic of guidelines by creating a board of employees whose role would be to promote blogging within the company while maintaining the company’s interest. One of their tasks would be to validate the bloggers’ comments for instance.
Nevertheless, are there no contradictions between the authenticity and the spontaneity “preached” and those rules? This stresses on the complexity for a company to radically modify its way to communicate - according to Hugh MACLEOD, “the trick consists in not trying to sell too openly” (gaping-void.com). Another problem is indirectly raised: are the culture of the company and its environment favourable to this kind of communication?
One company: one blog or several blogs?
Each company has to find the type of blog which corresponds to its communication strategy and which allows it to achieve its objectives. In the article “Corporate weblogs”, Phil WAINEWRIGHT (2002) sets up the following typology of the corporate blogs:
- Internal, in order to facilitate the team projects or the internal events communication for instance.
- External, aiming at exchanging with one or several specific targets (customers, suppliers, stakeholders…
Thus, the deal remains to settle upon communication actions through several targeted blogs and to manage their coherence (MALAVAL & DECAUDIN, 2006). Internally, blogs can replace intranets (which “cleanses” e-mails boxes) or inform 2x8 / 3x8 teams on the work made by the previous ones. Externally, companies which are quoted on the stock market will use a CEO blog as a financial communication channel because of three characteristics: immediate access, no intermediaries (diminution of the risk of errors) and universal (François NONNENMACHER, 2006). Whereas the CEO blogs are said to be too much profit oriented (and thus, less credible), the employees blogs, such as the expert blogs, are considered as the most powerful type of blogs for companies in term of credibility (Kevin DUGAN, 2004).
This list can be lengthened as each corporate blog should correspond to the specific needs and objectives of each company; moreover, both the layout and contents depend on the investment of the company in this tool - John JANTSCH (2006) adds that a corporate blog is only limited by the writer’s imagination.
III/ Corporate blogs within the communication strategies
Which role do corporate blogs play?
The implementation of several types of blogs rises from a real communication strategy. It is then relevant to understand the role of each corporate blog, which is complementary to the ones of the others, within the communication strategy.
Today, the main communication objectives of a company using this communication tool consist in communicating differently (Stephen BAKER, 2006) and building communities (BACKBONEMEDIA, 2004). Moreover, we can argue that corporate blogs take part of a long term communication strategy because of their high flexibility (John JANTSCH, 2006):
- Relationships between the company and its partners are radically different as they are based on high valued exchanges. It is interesting to note that in the framework of the net environment communication (KELLY, 1999), the social links between web surfers prevails on the ones with the brand or the company in term of loyalty.
- A double communication (Carole MATTHEWS, 2005): on the one hand, the company takes into account the comments posted by the bloggers on their corporate blog; on the other, “RSS” - Rich Site Summary (
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Site_Summary)-allows the company to easily have access to what is said on other blogs.
We can clearly identify two main differences between the communication of the blogs and the ones of the traditional channels:
- Companies intend to reposition their traditional image by appearing more “human”, which fits with the core values shared by the bloggers communities. Microsoft and Clairefontaine are two concrete examples: the first one has hired a blogger called Robert Scoble in order to break with its tyrannical image (COURRIER INTERNATIONAL, 2006) and the second one has developed a community on
www.orientation.fr.
- Whereas the other channels communicate on a given period of time, the communication within the blogosphere make the information always available, at the same period of time and from everywhere (Jeremy WRIGHT, 2006).
Last but not least, it is relevant to precise that corporate blogs represent a complementary communication channel and do not substitute themselves to other channels: a company both has to communicate informally and formally in order to maximize the impact of its communication.
The benefits of the corporate blogs…
From a technical point of view, corporate blogs are easy to set up as they do not require HTML expertise (Robyn ABER, 2004), contrary to a website project. Moreover, companies can save time by integrating content extracted from other blogs into theirs (Marc-Olivier PEYER, 2006).
If we respectively compare corporate blogs to PR and e-mails, this tools provides more authentic information, which considerably improve the brand image of the company and readers feel more involved. Moreover, a survey carried out by Hostway (Priya GANAPATI, 2005) reveals that “45% of the 2 5000 persons interviewed feel that corporate blogs are as ore more credible than internet advertising”. Furthermore, readers do not have to wait for the weekly one page updated or for the monthly magazine as the information is available for everyone at the same time.
From a general point of view, companies which own a corporate blog benefit from the following points:
- A competitive advantage or a good way to differentiate itself, as in France very few companies have launched theirs today.
- The ability to master its own communication channel. Jonathan SCHWARTZ, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystem argues that traditional communication channels regularly divert its comments from their original sense (David KLINE & Dan BURSTEIN, 2005)
- A good opportunity to reinforce brand equity as web surfers think it is a reliable source of information
- The spread of the brand image: “we project the brand image through many roads and the blog gives us even more dimension” (BACKBONEMEDIA, 2004). Moreover, companies are considered as more modern.
- The relation with readers: corporate blogs make customers more involved in the development of products and they make employees more concerned about the company (Susan HEATHFIELD, 2006).
- A respectful communication: corporate blogs are seen as “non-aggressive” as they do not intrude in the intimacy of the customers (at the contrary of direct marketing for instance).
If we compare the points above added to the others mentioned all along this contribution, with the low financial investment required (Robyn ABER, 2004) to set up a corporate blog, the final ratio between investment and benefits is then excellent.
…and their threats
Nevertheless, the threats are real. As already mentioned, the corporate blogs obey to an informal set of rules and regulations (or rather not clearly formalized): if a company breaks them, the consequences can be dramatic in term of image (Jory DES JARDINS, 2005). If we take the example of a company which cancels negative feedbacks without any explanations, readers will certainly discover it, forward the information to someone else (and so on), with the fulgurating effect of the Internet. At the end, the corporate blog will loose its credibility (and a large number of readers); it will then be a very hard task to have their confidence back.
Another delicate element resides in the way to write articles and comments (Robert SCOBLE, 2003): bloggers will reject a blog which is too formally written or too much profit oriented. On the other hand, let us note that a CEO addressing to financial and shareholders remains an exception.
Technically, spams - originally a very cheap quality US paté- are non-requested mails sent to a very great number of people without their prior agreement (
http://www.dicofr.com/cgi-bin/n.pl/dicofr/definition/20010101004535): they can damage the image of a company (a post linked to an inappropriate website) or over pollute the blog (hundreds of comments). Not only companies have to be vigilant at the beginning but also all along the development of their corporate blog (Jacques DIGOUT, 2006). Moreover, in his book “Bloggueur d’entreprise”, François NONNENMACHER emphasizes the following points:
- If a domain name is linked to a software blogging platform (example:
http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com linked to blogspot.com), a company could loose all the links referring to its posts when it decides to use another tool.
- If the enterprise does not use a tool which allows to save and to extract documents, it runs the risk to loose all the content.
- Too many useless plugins could slow down a corporate blog.
- Some blogging softwares are not able to manage more than one blog; it is then compulsory to set up each blog individually if the company aims to have several blogs on one server.
- Some tools require a high degree of HTML expertise to modify a template.
- Hosted Corporate blogs only have access to the statistic system of the blogging platform; then cannot customize it according to heir needs.
A blog, for which companies?
We partly answered to our main problematic by analyzing the different types of blogs and the roles they play within a global communication strategy. Another question seems primordial: which companies would take advantage of coporate blogging?
Would traditional or conservative companies embrace the informal rules of corporate blogging? (Robyn ABER, 2004). It seems delicate to precisely answer to this question as the notions of “traditional” and “conservative” are very large – do we refer to the products, the interlocutors or the markets? (Jacques DIGOUT, 2006). Nevertheless, we can still argue that a corporate blog appears as an excellent communication mean for the conservative companies (able to adopt an interactive style) which aim at communicating with a specific target. Then, a corporate blog is an excellent opportunity for a traditional firm which intends to break its conservative image.
Today, there is a large debate on the correlation between the size of a company and the effectiveness of a corporate blog (Dan BRICKLIN, 2002). Small and medium sized companies can easily share the stage with a minimum investment (Darrell ZAHORSKY, 2006); but can they really compete with the large ones which are supposed to have more means and time to feed the blogs? However, they can be more reactive than the large ones because there are fewer barriers to face. Thanks to a corporate blog, it is easier for them to precisely understand which role their niche plays inside the market (John CASS, 2005).
On the other hand, a large enterprise has a real interest in showing a human face to its customers. Moreover, it has the possibility to leverage its partners’ base, which has a strong impact on the creation and development of communities (Stephen TURCOTTE, 2005). However, a large company has to report to their stakeholders, which limits its innovation autonomy.
Whatever the size of a company is, the true matter consists in finding the right person, able to efficiently manage the corporate blog of the company on a long time perspective.
Who blogs?
Not only do people debate on the size of the companies which aims at blogging, they also discuss who should have the responsibility to blog internally or externally.
CEOs should corporate blog in order to directly communicate with customers, stakeholders and suppliers; but according to the study “who is really behind bosses’ blog?” ‘WRITER4BUSINESS, 2005), only 20% of them do corporate blog; worse, 83% admit not to write themselves the articles which are published, arguing that they have no time to do it or that they do not feel confident enough in writing articles (they only validate the articles before they are posted). However, CEOs should not underestimate the utility of corporate blogging: their blogs can deal with crisis communication or cope with public relations and institutional communication (internally and externally). Michel-Edouard Leclerc has clearly understood the importance of a CEO’s corporate blog: he used his as a crisis communication tool when his company experienced sanitary hygienic problems relating to chopped steaks (François NONNENMACHER, 2006).
According to Jeremy WRIGHT (2006), blogs of employees represent a very powerful mean to connect people with others inside the company and to build up relations with people outside. Furthermore, companies should encourage them to blog in order to let ideas coming up (especially if the company promotes idea blogs). In addition, a customer who is loyal to an employee blog might transpose fidelity to the brand (Jacques DIGOUT, 2006).
Nevertheless, it seems inappropriate to have one single person in charge of corporate blogging within the company. Especially when we think about the large range of subjects and the diversity of readers / targets. To be efficient, companies should allow people to communicate at different levels according to their profile and specialty. The matter consists then in ensuring the coherence of the different messages within the global communication strategy.
Some companies, instead of managing their own corporate blog, have chosen to entrust its development by someone else (person or company) who will endorse the responsibility of the content (
http://tubbydev.typepad.com/entreprise_et_blog/), except if no moderation charter has been established previously (
http://tubbydev.typepad.com/entreprise_et_blog/). According to the survey (1) we carried out, only 34% of the persons interviewed consider this alternative as the best one.
Nevertheless, the advantages are numerous:
- It allows the company to focus on its core business.
- Customers think the corporate blog is more objective, rather than if the company were developing it by itself
The externalization is also a good opportunity for a company which cannot afford to spend too much time in updating its corporate blog or which is not confident enough in making it. However, some small companies may not be able to afford those services, which could remain expensive for them.
Conclusion
The first step advantage
All along this contribution, we have balanced expected benefices with potential risks. The boarder between those two is very thin, and the ROI remains hardly perceivable or quantifiable. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the pioneers will benefit from a first step competitive advantage; it will then be difficult for the competition to fill its delay as the success of a blog is generally linked to the experience.
Which trend for the corporate blogs?
The more the companies will use blogs to communicate differently, the more they will divert them from their original use. This emphasizes the real difficulty to clearly predict the future of corporate blogging.
We could argue that companies will have to be coherent between what they write and the way they behave, while being authentic (Jeremy WRIGHT, 2006). It comes out from our survey (1) that 56% of the 20-25 year-old consumers are optimists regarding the future of corporate blogging.
Based on what is informally said in a large amount of personal blogs (
http://www.internetactu.net/?p=5831), we could draw up the following trend: corporate blogs will certainly contain much more sound and videos in a near future. Dave Slusher (http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org) argues that “the listeners will have a large choice: television, DVD, radio, podcasts, webcasts”. The “podcasting” will merely become an additional way to communicate within a continuum of methods available.Last and not least, technological evolutions will be less radical than culture changes (David Kline & Dan Burstein, 2005). Indeed, one of the major blog characteristics is that it considerably modifies the way companies and partners interact. Thanks to corporate blogs, we should – if everyone plays the game – witness real “win-win” situations: better products for the customers when companies take into account their comments; bigger market shares for companies owing to the customers’ loyalty. To make it simple, corporate blogs are good for good companies and bad for bad companies…
Bibliography
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[1] 53 persons from 20 to 25 year-old studying at the ESC Toulouse participated to it