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Michael Becket looks at how small enterprises can use blogging to their advantage. Blogs have suddenly leapt from self-indulgent Internet exhibitionism to big business. Web logs, which is the full name for them, used to be embarrassingly personal websites created by people who were too computer-addicted even to bore people in the local pub with their self-absorption. Although those anoraks are still at it, a branch of blogging has taken on independent commercial life.
It has passed from a personal description of "What I did on my holidays", through "How I am rearranging my collection of beer mats", to serious business. As an indication, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have hired corporate bloggers, Apple is suing one and Verizon Wireless, the second largest operator of US mobile-phone networks, faces a class-action in the courts as the result of blogs.
Serious newspapers from the Financial Times to the New York Times are running articles regularly on the subject. Salam Pax won fame by keeping a blog going through the US military attacks, a Waterstone employee was sacked for being rude about his bosses on the net and even Arianna Huffington (née Stassinopoulos) has her own website hosting blogs by celebrities.
The essence of a blog is the personal touch and constant news. These websites may have originated as only personal displays but some of the operators show writing talent or humour and some contain useful information or touch a chord. Those attract a readership.
They have become such a potent force that American political party rallies have, in addition to the normal enclosure for journalists, a separate reserved space for bloggers. That is because the political parties have found some of the online commentators are at least as pungent and articulate as the ones appearing in newspapers and magazines, and are getting a rapidly-growing following.
In a similar way they have grown to be significant for corporate communications. Waterstone is not the only company to have been slagged off by a current or former employee, only most of the critics have been careful to maintain their anonymity.
Disgruntled employees can dismantle their company to a worldwide audience with knowledgeable inside information. On the defensive end, therefore, companies are coming to realise they need to know what is being said about them by these uncontrolled commentators.
More especially, because blogs, as all other commentaries, are much more entertaining when vituperative, it is the denigrators who get the encouragement and readership. Some are started by people with an axe to grind and major companies have found the websites a serious threat. The Apple action, for example, is over the disclosure of a new product's details before it was officially launched. The Verizon case started with a disgruntled customer complaining about the absence of Bluetooth connection on his handset and he was then inundated with so many me-too emails that a class-action was started.
It was little wonder therefore that at first businesses saw blogs as a threat, with cranks and malcontents using them to attack major corporations. It is a very easy way for them to become a focus for complaints and there is little prospect that they will become less of a corporate nuisance as the practice spreads. The problem is not confined the major multinationals - somebody searching for a product or service online can be directed to a devastating review of a product. For instance a rather promising power washer lost a sale when my own wife found somebody rubbishing it in a highly articulate fashion and recommending a German competitor as far superior.
That means companies need to patrol the Internet to check whether anybody has complaints or comments about its products and services. Monitoring should give early warning of somebody maliciously trying to undermine the business's image in this way. It may be more difficult to silence them because legal action is often impossible or ineffective. At the very least, however, the company should be able to learn what is being thought of it and its products, which might help to improve them.
In addition to using the complaints for upgrading product, an early warning provides a chance to respond rapidly, before the discontent generates too much head of steam. Intelligence companies have sprung up to do that monitoring of online comment.
Where there is a threat there is also an opportunity. Instead of just waiting to launch a defence after being attacked, some energetic companies are getting their retaliation in first. They have not waited for it to become a target of collective consumerism but have produced their own blogs and so transformed the notion into one of the most effective forms of public relations and general communications - with a worldwide audience. And what makes them particularly intriguing is their cheapness and ready access to businesses of almost any size, including those that could not afford a PR department in-house, much less an agency.
Whatever individual bloggers can do, an organised company should be able to do better. The system provides an opportunity not only to fight back but, better still, to take the initiative by starting a corporate blog. A well thought out blog can be crafted into a valuable means of communication with past and potential customers.
Adriana Cronin-Lukas of The Big Blog Company explains a blog makes a small company far more visible than an ordinary website "which is just an online brochure". They can see how big companies have already spotted the opportunity.
As one example, Microsoft, which has been loudly attacked on many blogs, has hired its own in-house blogger. Robert Scoble was headhunted from NEC because he had acquired an extensive following through his expertise and honest commentary. His blog still includes much personal material, including chat about his new wife but, between more information about his private life than most people would want to know, he talks straight about what is good, what is faulty and what should be done at Microsoft, with a frankness many employers might find uncomfortable.
On the other hand, it is that very honesty that means even critics will listen when he says Microsoft is being unfairly attacked for something, though they would ridicule the standard corporate press release with a similar message. It has worked so well that others in the industry, including Sun Microsystems, have versions of corporate bloggers arriving on the Internet and a breed of consultants is springing up to tell companies how to go about it.
And that is one of the points about blogs - they are not meant to be persuasive. If they are to have any effect they cannot be just another version of the press handout. Any website that is anodyne, toadying or trying to sell, will be ignored and ridiculed. To gain attention in the cacophony of the Internet - there are literally millions of blogs - the corporate ones need to be separate from the companies' main websites and not only be honest but also be informative. They must be worth somebody's while to seek them out.
That in turn means not only something worth reading on the site itself, such as impartial information, but a constant flow of new material - it probably means updating the material pretty well daily. Credibility and authority have to be earned but they do accumulate as people begin to trust the expertise and reliability of a blog, according to Cronin-Lukas. At that stage other blogs begin to link to them to send their visitors to an area of specialist knowledge. Attaining that status is when the blog becomes really valuable because casual browsers will be directed through a growing network of blogs and will also appear higher up the lists of web browsers such as Google and Yahoo.
Once a company's blog becomes a trusted source of information, its links with the corporate official website can make it a remarkably effective selling tool. BiographyMichael Becket's 30-year career with the Daily Telegraph culminated with his appointment as Small Business Editor. He was for six years a civil servant, has worked in market research and for Shell, and ran his own publishing company. He has written several books on computing and business, the most recent being Starting Your Own Business (Macmillan).
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