The success of corporate blogs depends, in my opinion, on how much reign the writers are given to create “real” content that isn’t filtered. Otherwise, blogs aren’t that different from the PR tools already available and they won’t be inviting conversation. The Internet trend has been towards social networking sites and consumer-generated media, and I think corporate blogs will be successful because they allow readers to contribute to the discussion through comments. They are low-cost, fast and have audiovisual capabilities, and that can only be a good thing.

In their 2006 book Blogging for Business, Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos dedicate an entire chapter to the future of corporate blogs. In Internet years, 2006 is ancient history, but some of their statements hold even truer in 2010 as corporate blogs have become even more popular. They write that blogs are to the point that they cannot be ignored. They will not replace old media but will complement them (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006). “…[Blogs] may be used to accomplish many of the tasks that would have been applied to a press release in the past. However, a press release remains the ultimate, official statement of record by an organization…” (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006). Also, as technology becomes more accessible and easier to use, so, too, will blogs (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006).

“As the importance and influence of blogging grows, those that do not will be at a disadvantage. Just as an organization that chooses to ignore an important communication channel such as print newspapers is to some extent impaired, organizations that ignore the blogosphere will be missing an important source of information and feedback about the organization, its industry, its people, and more.”   – Blogging for Business, by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos (2006)

What did I do wrong and/or right?  I believe I went right by adding my name to posts and showing some personality to give the blog a more credible, human element. I wasn’t just regurgitating PR material. On the other hand, not asking for a blog policy or guidelines earlier or upon starting the job set me up for a clash.

What did they do wrong and/or right?   Based on my readings, they made several errors, including deleting something after it’s been posted, prior review and only allowing content related directly to the company (or to themselves). It is failure on my part and theirs by not having a blog policy or guidelines.

How could a situation like this have been avoided?   I think it could have been avoided with a BLOG POLICY or GUIDELINES. For example, the policy could say the topic of fatal injuries is off limits. Therefore I would know ahead of time what I could and could not write, they wouldn’t feel the need to delete something I already wrote and I wouldn’t have to get angry and lose my job over it. I guess I could also not start out on a story that I didn’t know the ending to, though I never would have predicted the ending that it had and I think doing it that way allowed for readers to have some fun following along in real time.

How does journalism relate to corporate blogging?   At the heart of the issue is that I stood up for journalistic ethics that I was being taught in college and personally believe in. As someone being trained to be a journalist, not a PR writer, did I even fit in writing a corporate blog?

Corporate blogs are an informal type of PR. Posts can tell a story, just like a newspaper article. Journalism and PR share some of the same ethics. For a refresher on blogging ethics, see my post here. The Public Relations Society of America and Society of Professional Journalists each have a code of ethics. Both journalism and PR must tell the truth, but PR material has some additional rules. From an earlier Blog O’ Blogs post – “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.”

Good journalism shows all sides of a story, good and bad. Likewise, good PR acknowledges problems and what the company is doing to fix them, instead of ignoring them and simply writing about the glossy stuff in life.

Though the Internet has made it easier and far more common for journalism outlets to cover up mistakes, the standard has been to leave them and publicly correct them in future publications. This also goes for blogging, as covered at the end of this earlier post. The same goes for PR itself.

Journalists and PR practitioners should both avoid conflicts of interest. There is one conflict of interest, though, that is unavoidable and basically implied with corporate bloggers – they work for the company, so they are likely to write favorably about that company. That is an important difference that sets corporate blogs apart. Blogs, corporate and non-corporate, often contain opinion, something that should be absent in objective journalism.

So there are some differences between PR and journalism, but they share many common ethics and corporate blogs blend the two.

The principle way for corporations to allow conversations is by allowing reader comments, a topic I wrote about earlier in the blog. Those who post comments don’t usually expect a reply, but at the same time they don’t expect to be ignored (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006). A writer can write a comment in reply to one specific reader comment or create a new post addressing comments made by multiple readers, but they should be consistent so people don’t perceive favoritism (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006).

However, corporations need to be aware that readers and reader comments are probably not representative of the general population. Blogs tend to be enthymematic — they bring people already knowledgeable on a topic — so they trade wide readership for the ability to reach a niche audience (Kent, 2008). Reader comments have been called the “hallelujah ”choir (Kent, 2008), echo chamber phenomenon and cultural tribalism (Dwyer, 2007). However, reaching the choir is important when an organization is trying to influence opinion leaders, innovators, and early adopters (Kent, 2008). As Paine (2007) wrote, “Success in today’s marketplace is measured not by how broad your reach is but by how deep your network is.”

Corporations should also supply a way for readers to contact the writer or company other than public comments. Cho’s 2006 study of self-disclosure in 31 corporate blogs found that none provided contact information. Self-disclosure may increase credibility, but “the result of this study suggests that the corporate blogs are still likely to focus on making good impressions to their consumers and visitors rather than attempt to communicate with their consumers.” (Cho, 2006).

I tried to continue what they had started. The blog discussed Fairplex Park and general topics in horse racing. It included their opinion, but never revealed their identity as the author. I eventually added my name on the posts I authored, at the suggestion of a journalist that was working in the press box with me during their race meet that September. I thought providing my name would give the blog more credibility because readers would know who was “speaking.”

Everything was going well. After their September race meet I continued to work on the blog as time allowed, considering I went back to college full-time.

My supervisor left around Thanksgiving that year, after the race meet, to take another job. Fairplex didn’t search for someone to replace them, so Fairplex tapped an employee from one of their other divisions to fill the void.

I always tried to find something different, to create unique content for the blog that one couldn’t find anywhere else. That would bring readers to the blog and Web site. In a photojournalism class at my college we were required to do a photo essay. I immediately wanted to do one related to horse racing, and decided to do one on a horse’s preparations in the week before a race. This photo essay would also provide fresh, original content to post on the blog.

Enter Blue Exit. I was kindly granted permission to take photos of him at critical junctions in the week before he ran in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap run at Santa Anita Park, not far from Fairplex. You can see all of the photos here. In order to keep the content relevant, I posted each day’s photos/video the same day I took them so readers could follow along in near-real time. The story had begun and I was going to follow through to the end. I knew I already had people hooked because of feedback on fan forums throughout the Internet, where I had posted links to promote the blog.

In a perfect world the grand finale would be an amazing win in the race! That was not to be. Things went horribly wrong, ending with Blue Exit suffering a fatal injury in the race. I think I had a better chance of getting struck by lightning than having that happen to a horse I knew and liked, a horse I was following for a photo essay, and a horse I was following on a corporate blog.

The last thing I wanted to do was write about that emotionally scarring day, but I thought I had the responsibility to the readers to finish the story I had started. I was not going to ignore the ending and act like it never happened, and I certainly wasn’t going to delete the posts I had already made on the subject. So I wrote. To review the post in its entirety, see my re-post HERE. I didn’t let it all hang out. I left out a lot of details, both related to the horse and myself, but I did include some personal feelings, something that my readings have indicated is a good thing for corporate blogs. Now, I don’t know if this applies to sad emotions, but I couldn’t control the ending to the story. It was sad and there’s no way around it.

I got several consolatory comments from concerned readers. That’s several more comments than other posts had been averaging. Readers obviously cared.

Fast forward two weeks later and an employee in the horse racing department notified me that my new supervisor, who hadn’t even talked to me since they took over the prior year, wanted to review my posts before they went on the blog. Phone conversations that I had with them indicated they hadn’t even been reading the Web site, let alone the blog, until after the Blue Exit incident. The employee who told me about the reviewing process, and my new supervisor, suggested some topics for the blog to take my mind off of things, but they were things I felt were a clear conflict of interest - things they had a personal interest in.

I don’t have a problem with the posts being reviewed. I’d rather be corrected early than scolded later for not knowing what was OK and what wasn’t (there were no blog policies or guidelines at Fairplex). I do, however, have a problem with the person reviewing them not letting me post anything that isn’t directly related to them. That is what happened once I agreed to the reviewing process. That is not promoting Fairplex nor is it fostering interesting content to attract readers.

At this point supervisor-employee relations are now aggravated. But wait, there’s more! One day I noticed the final Blue Exit post was gone. Poof! I was annoyed that they hadn’t notified me they were doing this and just hoped I’d never notice. If they had asked me or told me that they wanted to take it down, I would not have been that angry. When I asked my supervisor why it had been taken down, they replied in an e-mail saying it was “a little dark for our blog.” It was deleted more than three weeks after it was originally posted. It had already been seen and noted by readers, so what harm did they think they were preventing by taking it down then?

I let my supervisor know that I wasn’t happy with how it was handled and explained my reasoning for posting it in the first place. I also told them I’d like to have guidelines so I don’t waste my time reporting/writing something only to have them deny posting. They replied “I agree that the other two Blue Exit blogs should have been removed with the first one.” That’s not what I asked for! They went on to write, “In an effort to utilize our full time employees better, we will be doing the blogging in house from now on.” So I lost my little corporate blogging job and the other perfectly bright Blue Exit posts were deleted.

I watched what happened to the blog afterwards, and it was depressing. The blog posts had errors and became more and more infrequent until they eventually just…stopped. The last post was Aug. 19, 2009. Right at the time I left, Fairplex was trying to ramp up their social media presence (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), asking for my assistance on the horse racing end of it. That never took off, not helped by the fact that I was no longer there.

I wasn’t happy to lose my job, but I wasn’t dependent on it for a living so I felt it was more important to stand up for what I believe in. I was/am majoring in communication with an emphasis in journalism. I have been taught journalistic ethics and agree with them.

The Blue Exit incident prompted me to select corporate blogs as my topic for my senior capstone project, and now that I have researched the topic more I want to apply my what I have learned to my experience. What did I do wrong and/or right? What did they do wrong and/or right? How does journalism relate to corporate blogging? How could a situation like this have been avoided? I’ll address these questions in future posts.

• Leaked Confidential Info
• Breaking the Security Exchange Commission’s disclosure rules for publicly traded companies
• Copyright infringement
• Defamation
• Invasion of privacy
• Sexual harassment
• Offensive content

Blogs are more dangerous that other forms of corporate communication because incorrect information can spread quickly through permalinks, pings, links, etc. (Flynn, 2006). “Even though a defamatory comment may be removed from a company’s server (and access blocked), the information may nevertheless remain prominent in the blogosphere.” (Terilli, Driscoll, & Stacks, 2008).

Some of the risky content comes through reader comments. However, Terilli, Driscoll and Stacks (2008) write that if a blog allows third-party readers to independently post comments, then the company would likely escape liability. This applies even when comments are moderated.

Flynn’s (2006) “blog action plan” is a complete yet concise approach:

1. Form a blog risk-management, compliance and litigation team to create blog rules and enact them.

2. Assign a “blog czar.”

3. Establish a clear objective.

4. Train employees about blogs.

5. Require employees to sign an agreement that they won’t share confidential company info or offensive content on a blog.

6. Use discipline to enforce blog policies.

“Blogs can humanize faceless behemoths.”
- Wright & Hinson (2008)

“By restoring a human face to a company’s self-presentation, blogging has been heralded as a paradigm shift in the way companies interact with customers.”
- Dwyer (2007)

“[In a study,] Participants assigned to the blog condition perceived an organization’s “conversational human voice” to be greater than participants who were assigned to read traditional Web pages.”
- Kelleher & Miller (2006)

See a trend? In my readings, the overwhelming majority highlighted a corporate blog’s human element as one of its greatest strengths, if not the greatest strength. “Particularly skillful writers can use corporate blogs to build valuable relationships – and possibly avert public relations disasters – thanks to their willingness to be forthright, transparent, and brutally honest in their commentary” (Flynn, 2006). First, a corporate blog must be allowed to have a human element in the first place. This requires that the controlling hands take a step back and let the writer show some personality.

Raghavan (2008) writes that a blog writer should “wear [their] bias on [their] sleeve, serve up a healthy does of opinion, and use [their] personality as a differentiator.” Writing with a point of view is a good way to start a conversation (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Solis and Breakenridge (2009) write that corporate blogs “[open] up the corporate kimono – exposing the soul and personality of the company to facilitate genuine communication.” According to Holtz and Demopoulos (2006), blogs should written in conversational voice and with writer’s insights.

Several emphasize that a blog should not be written like traditional marketing material. Raghavan (2008) writes that blogs should tell stories in interesting ways, not in a just-the-facts style. Solis and Breakenridge (2009) emphasize that a blog should not be a “vehicle for re-purposing marketing content and messages,” adding that transparency is vital for social media in general. Flynn (2006) goes so far as to say “…blogs that are written by dispassionate marketing professionals who are simply going through the motions of writing copy to generate sales are destined for failure, public ridicule – and perhaps attack – in the blogosphere.”

What are some of the ways a corporate blog can express a human touch? To begin with, it should share some inside information and show a sincere expression of concern (Dwyer, 2007). Cho (2006) writes that informal language can give a brand personality traits. In general, Internet communication should have an openness to dialogue and conversational communication and provide prompt feedback (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Kelleher and Miller also give some specific ways to show some soul – have humor, admit mistakes, treat others as human, and provide links to competitors.

However, because blogs are prone to having such an informal tone, they are not best for all types of corporate communications. Kelleher and Miller (2006) state that they are not “the best venue for “PR” messages intended to talk up an organization’s commitment to its public relationships.”

CEOs are the business equivalent of a celebrity. High-profile bloggers raise legal and ethical concerns different from those of other bloggers (Terilli, Jr. & Arnorsdottir, 2008).

“The words of a CEO, or a stand-in, can affect markets, share prices, communities, employees and consumers. The conclusions one draws about the intelligence, experience or character of a CEO, or other significant corporate officer, can be affected by statements attributed to that individual. Falsely claiming the words of a ghostwriter were actually those of the CEO may even lead some to incorrectly evaluate the value of his or her leadership skills.” (Terilli, Jr. & Arnorsdottir, 2008)

The nature of their busy lives might lead some high-profile bloggers to have anonymous assistants write for them (Terilli, Jr. & Arnorsdottir, 2008). Here are some arguments for and against this ghostwriter practice:

FOR

(As written by John Cass; cited by Solis and Dierdre Breakenridge, 2009) Blogger Sterling Hager disagrees with the Public Relations Society of America’s advice that corporate employees should write all their own blog content. He wrote that a PR person should know enough about their client to write informed posts. Also, if corporate employees can do all of that themselves, then they may no longer see the need for a PR professional. Hager wrote, “…if a senior corporate executive had the time, talent, and the interest, the blog he or she authors will without question be better than anything a PR stand-in could produce. But a PR professional worth his or her salt and who can write can do a good job of it and readers, quite frankly, don’t give a darn who writes the copy as long as it is real, useful, entertaining, varied, insightful, consistent, regular, and important.”

As cited by Solis and Breakenridge (2009), Kari Hanson supports Hager’s position by writing, “…[PR practitioners have] always written speeches, quotes for releases, and even bylines. Given the right circumstances, a blog is no different…Just as we run executive opinion pieces by the “authors” and ask them to personalize them, we can’t expect to always craft perfect blog posts for clients and executives. But we can certainly provide a foundation to help feed that online conversation and prevent a blog being abandoned.”

AGAINST

John Cass (cited in Solis and Breakenridge, 2009) doesn’t think the sole purpose of a corporate blog is PR, and that product managers and senior scientists are the most knowledgeable on engineering and customer service issues and therefore are most suited to write on those subjects. Also, Cass writes about reader perceptions:

“I think that in the perception of the reader blogging is more like talking with someone on a telephone or even in the same room. You would not expect an actor to take the place of the individual to whom you are chatting with on the other end of a telephone line. Well it is just the same with blogging. When someone puts their name to a blog post the expectation on the part of the reader is that the person who wrote a blog post is the person whose name appears on the masthead.”

Paine (2007) is also against ghostwriting. She wrote, “I’m not sure [ghostwriting’s] unethical; it’s just not very effective. Blogs become popular because they reflect the real personalities and values of the people writing them…[People] read blogs to get the information behind the corporate-speak.”

♦

As you can see, ghostwriting raises some serious ethical issues of honesty. What do you think? Do you want to know exactly where the meat in your blog sausage comes from, or do you not care as long as it tastes good?

Who fits the bill? A CEO, a professional blogger, an employee from the PR department? A combination thereof?

Before a company begins a blog, they should first have executive, communications, business development, marketing, PR, and Web managers sit down and map out a plan for who will write and the goals (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009).

According to Flynn (2006), many companies just expand the job duties of their current marketing/PR staff. More and more companies are hiring professionals to write their blogs, their salaries ranging from $40,000 to $70,000 (sign me up!).

Some companies hire a chief blogger. This writer should have expertise and passion for the subject (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006). An employee undertaking a blog should be able to write in a natural voice, have time to post at least twice a week, have time to monitor comments, have listening and conversation skills, and commit themselves to the blog (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006).

CEO or high-level executive blogs are on the rise. Flynn (2006) wrote that “…corporate reputations are in part defined by the chief executive officer, [so] it should come as no surprise that blogging by CEOs and other C-level executives is on the rise.” Before starting a blog, a CEO should consider how much time they can commit to it, if they have a point of view, how much patience they have, if they enjoy writing, have a thick skin, who will screen posts and comments, and if they’ve completed blog training (Flynn, 2006).

A corporate blog with more than one author is actually quite popular according to a study by Cho (2006). In a survey of 31 corporate blogs, the most popular format was multi-vocal (multiple authors), with 16. There were 14 uni-vocal blogs (single author), and four semi uni-vocal (includes guest authors).

Some corporate blogs aren’t written by the name associated with it, but passed off to PR staff – “…seemingly genuine words that are no more real that the quotes in company news releases.” (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009).

Some blogs don’t even pretend to be authored by a real, living human being. According to Holtz and Demopoulos (2006), character or fake blogs such as these usually fail. Miserably. An example of a failed character blog was one of rum mascot Captain Morgan. As cited in “Blogging for Business,” PR blogger Steve Rubel wrote in 2005, “Character blogs are a waste of time because a character is not and never will be human…blogging is a conversation. It’s about being real and transparent.”

Transparency is lost when a blog is written by “ghostwriters,” the next topic on Blog O’ Blogs.