Types of Corporate Blogs

February 10, 2010 at 12:21 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Srividya Raghavan (2006) spells out five corporate blog categories:

• Employee blogs – written by employees, these encourage effective communication within the organization.
• CEO/leadership blogs – written by CEOs or other top executives.
• Corporate blogs – maintained by management to share information and network with stakeholders. They are targeted to a specific audience and functional.
• Marketing/communication blogs – promote a product or service already in existence.
• Product-related blogs – ask for public’s help for product brainstorming and product testing. An example would be a beta software program.

Michael Kent (2008) separates corporate blogs into even more groups — advertising, CEO commentary, employee, customer service, business commentary, internal info sharing, knowledge management, marketing, and promotional.

In Business Blogging in the Fog of Law (Terilli, Driscoll, and Stacks, 2008) blogs are categorized by how closely they are tied to the organization, as it relates to liability:

• Corporate directed and controlled – written and posted by employees or agents for the corporation at its expense
• Corporate-supported but not directed or controlled – written by employees without compensation, but with support and use of resources (such as computers)
• Corporate employee or agent without corporate support but with acquiescence – a blogger known and tolerated by the company and who may have access to special inside knowledge and gain credibility from that access.
• Known to corporation
• Unknown or opposed by corporation

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Elements of a Business Blog

February 7, 2010 at 5:04 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s time for some of the basics. The following is a summary of the elements of a blog as listed in the book Blogging for Business: Everything you need to know and why you should care by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos (2006).

Elements of a Business Blog

  • Name/title – anything goes. A boring, descriptive title isn’t recommended.
  • Description – a subtitle explaining the blog.
  • Posts – dated and in reverse chronological order and posted weekly, daily, or even multiple times each day. “For a blog to be effective, the posts need to contain useful content and be primarily non-promotional.” Some promotional posts are OK, but they need to be written in a conversational and informational tone. Use links within posts.
  • Comments – A blog that doesn’t allow reader comments may not be a blog at all. It loses one of its key functionalities – interactivity. “The ability to have a conversation is clearly diminished if one party cannot speak!” However, Dave Winer, credited with inventing blogs, thinks the point of a blog is only to share your own feelings, and if people want to comment they can do so in their own blog. This distinguishes blogs from message boards. You can control spam through “captcha” codes and comment moderation. Captcha codes are random assortments or letters and numbers that readers must manually type in. Comment moderation should not be used to avoid criticisms or discussion.
  • Trackbacks – link others’ posts about a blog back to the original blog entry that’s being discussed. Then the trackback links are posted as comments under the post. However, be sure to control trackback spam.
  • Permalinks – permanent URL addresses for each individual blog post.
  • Sidebar – can contain anything, like an author biography, categories, search bars, links, advertisements, etc.
  • Blog rolls – lists of other blogs.
  • Archives – by month or week.
  • Categories – and popular tags.
  • Search – blog and/or general Internet search bars.
  • Syndication – updated information from a Web site can be stored in a live feed. Examples of feed software are RSS (really simple syndication) and Atom. These aggregators let readers quickly scan for new content.

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The Worst Possible Ending (Re-post)

December 18, 2009 at 4:19 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

What follows is a re-post of a blog entry, the deletion of which led to a disagreement with my supervisor, which led to me losing my job. I have no regrets.

March 7, 2009.

Days like this make me question my love for horse racing.

This week I have been following Blue Exit as he trained for the “Big ‘Cap.” Those who have checked the blog often have had the chance to follow along, too.

On Saturday, I went to morning workouts. An Eoin Harty horse reportedly broke down at the end of its workout. It would not surprise me if that had something to do with Colonel John (a Harty trainee) being scratched from the Big ‘Cap. Also, three horses got loose on the tracks and tore trough the barn area during the time that I was there.

There just seemed to be an odd feeling in the air.

I went to the Hollendorfer barn to get a photo of the detention stall sign in front of Blue Exit’s stall. While I was there, I was pleasantly surprised to see his owners come in to visit him. It was a great photo opportunity, as Blue happily reveled in the attention.

Not surprisingly, Blue Exit was tough to handle in the paddock, repeatedly lunging forward. His good looks brought his odds down to 6-1 by post time. His connections have always been high on him, and now the public was starting to agree.

I felt butterflies in my stomach before the race, as I always do before the start of the Big ‘Cap, my favorite race. Blue loaded without a single moment of hesitation. The crowd, as in past years, let out a roar as the gates broke open.

Blue was getting a dream trip, mid-pack and saving ground along the rail. I was focused on his orange #7 saddlecloth on the infield big screen. As the field entered the third turn, I saw his head bob. Then again. And again.

He had broken down. His right front leg was fractured with one bad step.

Is this really happening?

I have seen breakdowns before, on TV and in person. The race call always becomes a blur after it happens.

This one was different. It was worse. I had never been this emotionally attached to a horse who broke down.

Dazed and aimless, tears filling my eyes, I meandered back to the barn, where I overheard Blue’s fate. He was gone. I didn’t expect any differently, judging by how quickly he had stopped.

I have known about Blue since he was imported from France last fall. I’ve seen him a couple times, and followed him more extensively for just the past week. I can’t even imagine how those who have seen him everyday for the past six months feel. I don’t want to imagine. Their faces were blank, likely still in shock.

In a perfect world, no horse would ever get injured. In the real world, accidents happen in many different ways. Unfortunately with the equine anatomy, one misstep can spell disaster.

Blue Exit’s fatal racing injury was the second this year on Santa Anita’s Pro-Ride track. That is a positive statistic.

Unfortunately, it’s two horses too many.

Rest in peace, beautiful Blue.

___________________

To remember Blue Exit at his best, see these links:

Youtube Video

Additional Photos from Friday and Saturday

Blue Exit - Photo © 2009 Marcie Heacox.

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Eight Types of Companies Benefitting from Corporate Blogs

September 17, 2009 at 4:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Youtube video from gutzywoman:

In her article, Ducic includes a complete list of the types of companies benefitting from corporate blogs:

1. Companies which need to present a human face to their activities.
2. Companies which rely on their specialist knowledge to attract clients
3. Companies which have progressed beyond the hard sell approach.
4. Companies wanting to become more of a partner than a supplier.
5. Companies wishing to be THE information resource for their market niche.
6. Companies organizing conferences, seminars and exhibitions.
7. Companies looking to develop a network or community around them.
8. Companies developing new products or services.

See the entire article here.

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Blog Review – “newsprint”

September 14, 2009 at 12:04 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“newsprint” (lowercase) is the blog for CafePress.com, a major provider of customizable products such as T-shirts and coffee mugs. In my Internet browsing, I stumbled upon this blog and decided to review it because it surprised me. CafePress is not the first type of site I would expect to have a blog.

They promote themselves through their users, much like the Flickr blog.

There are plenty of pictures and videos, but they are sometimes haphazardly placed on the page. Posts are frequent and engaging, and always relate back to CafePress somehow.

The farthest back I could go in the archives was March 28, 2008. In that post, it says, “The blog lives again.” This is the previous blog location.

A conspicuous omission is the real identity of the author. From what I can gather, the writer’s first name is Leslie. Here’s her biography on the old blog.

There’s no stated disclaimer specifically for the blog. The general site disclaimer includes that the user-created products do not necessarily reflect the views of CafePress.

As blogs should be, this one is interactive. The “newsprint” title was chosen and voted on by readers, “[u]nderstanding that CafePress is a platform for passionate people to express themselves freely, and that both our merchandise and this blog are about starting conversations and self-expression…” Comments are not very numerous, but they are positive and negative.

The diction is informal yet witty. Leslie is a big fan and supporter of freedom of speech/press. That’s what drives the company’s business – people wanting to exercising their freedom of expression in tangible form.

Much of the blog content is inspired by the hot topic(s) printed on CafePress products. “Because [their] content is a reflection of the public discourse, the CafePress system up to this point has been a good indicator of political trends.”(quote here) It so happens that much of the user-created content centers around controversial topics such as gay marriage, environmentalism, human rights and political elections. These types of topics are often the subject of protests, where T-shirts, posters and the like are common tools.

To browse topics it seems like the blog has a liberal bias because much more attention is afforded to topics on a liberal agenda, but this is probably just a reflection of how many pro-liberal items are created by users. Upon closer reading, I notice that sentences are worded objectively and there’s no double standard, as in this post about the cycle of political opposition.

Here’s some obligatory damage control.

Overall, the “newsprint” blog does a great job of selling the company, always relating current topics to the products its users create and extolling the benefits of wearing those products.

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The Blog Herald

September 13, 2009 at 12:30 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

You can read the latest blogosphere news at the Blog Herald.

Here’s a list of posts tagged with “corporate blogging.”

This Web site was an excellent discovery, and now I just need to try to catch up!

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“Breaking Bad”

September 10, 2009 at 9:04 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Blogs offer instantaneous news, and some companies are using them to break their own bad news before anyone else gets their hands on it. This topic is discussed in a New York Times article by Claire Cain Miller, with the focus on layoffs. It’s like pre-damage control. One executive said, “We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.” Miller writes, “A blog post also comes across as more heartfelt than a press release with canned quotations.” She also writes that public relations experts say it’s inevitable that companies will feel the need to break bad news on their blogs. I found this quote from Andy Sernovitz, at the end of the article,  to be very interesting – “There are hold-out companies that still wish there was traditional P.R. control of the message, but that day is long over.”

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Blogging Ethics

September 8, 2009 at 1:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Though blogs have been around for what is considered ages in terms of the Internet, they are a relatively new form of media and as a result still contain a lot of kinks.

Check out Carolynne Burkholder’s thorough examination of blogging ethics for the University of Madison-Wisconsin.

Burkholder defines blogs as journalism, and applies journalistic ethics to them. She asks if bloggers are journalists and if they need to “abide by the same rules as traditional, professional journalists.” Because blogs do not go through the same editing process as traditional media, they may contain more inaccuracies. However, bloggers may have more readers’ trust than a traditional journalist, so they can be very influential.

Burkholder cites codes of ethics from several sources. Rebecca Blood’s code is a good base:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true. If your statement is speculation, say so.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it. Linking to referenced material allows readers to judge for themselves the accuracy and insightfulness of your statements.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

The conflict of interest is especially important for corporate blogs, so that readers understand that the writer is most likely going to favor the company that employs them. This can be accomplished by a disclaimer that notes the writer’s affiliation. It is pretty obvious that a blog is going to biased if it is embedded within a company’s Web site, but there’s the chance that some readers may not make that assumption.

Journalist Jonathan Dube created a detailed code of ethics based off of the one used by the Society of Professional Journalists . Some parts of his code are particularly important for corporate blogs:

• Make certain that Weblog entries, quotations, headlines, photos and all other content do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
• Explain each Weblog’s mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers’ conduct.
• Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers

But, as Burkholder writes, “Martin Kuhn from the University of North Carolina suggests that Dube’s code does not address the human dialogue and interactive nature of blogs.” Highlights of Kuhn’s code that especially pertain to corporate blogs are:

• Do not restrict access to your blog by specific individuals or groups
• Do not self censor by removing posts or comments once they are published
• Allow and encourage comments on your blog
• Reveal your personal affiliations and conflicts of interest
• Reveal your identity as much as possible (name, photo, background info, etc.)
• Build relationships by responding to e-mails and comments regularly

Revealing identity is an important step that many corporate blogs may miss. If the author’s name and other info is provided, readers are more likely to trust and connect with them. The author is more accountable for the blog content. They cannot hide behind a veil of anonymity under the company banner. This makes the company itself less liable for false, damaging information, but it gives the blog more credibility than if it were written by one or more anonymous authors. Identification can also allow the author to express more of their personality in the posts, rather than write like a corporate PR robot.

There is no universal blogging code of ethics. Yet. For now, the three mentioned above are a good starting point. There’s room for improvement, and special rules may be needed based on each individual company.

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Are you the Gatekeeper?

September 5, 2009 at 11:31 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Keymaster of Gozer goes on an epic quest to find the Gatekeeper in “Ghostbusters.” One would have to go on a similar quest to find the gatekeeper for the Internet.

While there are limited television, radio and large print media outlets in each region, there is a seemingly unlimited amount of pages on the internet. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates radio and television. Print media is self-regulated, if at all, and protected by “freedom of the press” guaranteed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Internet is most similar to print media because of its lack of regulation. However, while most print media have editors that serve as gatekeepers, essentially everyone can publish directly to the Internet with no filter. Blogs are hotspots for exercising freedom of speech and freedom of press. Unfortunately, the lack of editors also means incorrect information can propagate because there’s not the fact-checking and levels of editing that characterize traditional media.

There are countless examples of the lack of a gatekeeper causing problems on the Internet, but here are a couple recent ones.

Blogger “April’s Mom” faked being pregnant and angered many people when the scam was uncovered. She then deleted her blog, Web site and Twitter and Facebook accounts, but someone had already identified her.

This disturbing Wikipedia hoax showed how unreliable internet sources can be, yet how reliant some media sources are on them. Sociology student Shane Fitzgerald conducted an experiment to see how many people would trust a phony quote posted on Wikipedia. Blogs and newspaper sites around the world used the un-attributed quote. From the article linked above:

“So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald’s florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.”

The introduction of the Internet greatly increased the demand for instant information. In the rush to provide info, mistakes are sometimes made and spread with ease. Mistakes can also easily be covered up because they can just be deleted or edited out of a post. Unlike in other media, it’s not permanently on the record for all to see.

Are there any restrictions for corporate blogs?

Because corporate blogs are a form of advertising, they fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which regulates the marketplace in the interest of consumers. Truth-in-advertising laws are in place to ensure advertisers are not deceiving customers.

According to PR Watch, the FTC may require bloggers, Twitterers and others to disclose when they’ve been compensated for product placement. This should include corporate blogs because they can provide product placement for other companies just as easily as any “citizen blogger.” Facilitators for viral marketing can be held legally liable for false statements about products or services.

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Blog Review – “Randy’s Journal”

September 1, 2009 at 9:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

In this entry I will review “Randy’s Journal”, a corporate blog of massive aerospace and defense corporation Boeing. I randomly selected it from this list of corporate blogs. The author, Randy Tinseth, is vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle.

The posts are frequent enough, though there are some week-long or longer gaps. There is excellent use of pictures, which is especially important when a topic includes technical descriptions. There are also some videos.

Unfortunately, there are few embedded links. They may not be as necessary in this blog, though, because much of the information is original content that comes direct from a knowledgeable employee.

Randy’s Journal seems to be a blend of journalism and public relations, but mostly PR. The blog contains frequent updates on the status of various projects, with detailed information. There are some firsthand stories. It acknowledges the issues the company has had developing its products. The well-publicized delays of the 787 Dreamliner are chronicled in depth. One reader comment  says, “I do admire Boeing’s guts in admitting the Dreamliner’s not fully ready to fly. At least, you have not been deceiving us, just disappointing us.”

I’m not an aerospace expert by any means, but I can understand about 90 percent of the material because the wording is simple and “layman” enough for the general public. Aerospace enthusiasts are the demographic most likely to read this blog, but it can also be interesting to frequent fliers and general technology enthusiasts.

It starts to seem like many posts end with (generalized) – “Everyone’s working really hard and doing a great job but we’re cautiously optimistic.” This and this seem like damage control.

Comments cover a wide range from negative to positive. In the “Guidelines” link on the right side, there is a comment policy that states:

  • Offensive or off-topic comments will not be posted.
  • We will not treat any comments you submit as confidential information.
  • Please do not submit comments that contain any confidential information belonging to anyone else.

One comment here speaks of a different company’s innovation. This one  has multiple comments criticizing management, but another person says they will only fly on a Boeing craft. Comments critical of management are a common theme throughout, but for every negative comment it seems there is a positive one.

Boeing wisely runs a disclaimer for the blog.

In review, the blog is very informative and provides news in a timely fashion. It is PR-based and aims to present news in a manner that benefits Boeing, but both critical and praise-filled comments are allowed on the posts, creating a balanced feel.

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