This article, Blogs and corporation: managing the risk, reaping the benefits is written by Joshua L. Cox, Eric R. Martinez and Kevin B. Quinlan. Generally, this article talks about the advancement of technology nowadays and the needs of corporations to use these new media technology in their communication plan because of the people nowadays are developing as well as the technology. Therefore, in order to reach their audiences, corporations must adapt this new environment by recognizing that certain facts regarding to their audience and new media. Practically, this article talks about blog which is one of the medium used to communicate. Further, in this article also talks about blog history, internal and external blogger in corporation, the risks of blogs, ethics of blogging, external third-party blogs, internal and external corporate blogs, pioneers in corporate blogging policy and few case studies in illustrating the opportunities and risks of blogging. At the end of this article, it also talks about their recommendation of policy of blogging.
Blog started in 1980s from the online diaries that become very popular in the mid 1990s. From BBC Online 2006, there are about 1.3 million posts and 100,000 new blogs appear on the internet each day. Later, at the end of the year, a search blog engine, Technorati was tracking more tha 57 million blogs. The popularity of blogs is may be because of its nature attribute like personal and informal way of communication. On the other hand, many users rely on blogs when making purchase decisions because they consider the blogger would be the experts of any product or category. Internal blog is generated by people inside the organization.
Usually confidential, corporate blogs can convey information from employees and management to company audiences. The blogs makes them a more appealing way of communicating than formal call centers or white papers. However, blogs also pose to substantial threats. The lack of governing the blogosphere has created the analogy to the ‘wild west’. Misguided or malicious employee blogs have the potential to damage corporation’s carefully crafted brand. Moreover, people can voice out their complaints to the world in any second with just one click. Competitors also can employ any bloggers that can attack corporation or hire bloggers to start negative blog campaigns for no apparent reason. The uncontrolled nature of blogosphere raises ethical issues.
Blogs are often seen as unreliable sources of information. The other dangerous thing is astroturfing which is considered as unethical in blogging. Astroturfing is the fabrication of grassroots marketing campaign. Its intentionally falsifies the source and authenticity of the message. Ethical policies for corporate blogging must therefore address the truth, authenticity, verifiability and transparency. In the world of blogging, there are few pioneers that have created policies regarding to blogs. There are five corporations that started the Sun (Policy on public discourse), Feedster (Corporate Blogging policy), Plaxo (Public Iternet Communication Policy), Yahoo! (Personal Blog Guidelines) and IBM (Corporate Blogging Policy and Guidelines). There are lots of independent bloggers out there are professional in their area of interest. Hence, corporations should not overlook these bloggers because they might influence their readers.
There are few things that corporations must do to control the external third-party blogs. Corporations must be aware of bloggers, engage with them when possible like adding them to company’s mailing contact for new press releases or new products and most important of all to respond to them quickly and appropriately. On the other side which is the internal and external corporate blogs, there are nine guidelines written in this article. There are, corporations must have consistent and authentic first-person voice; allow comments but have to monitor them; be honest and transparent; add value in terms of opinion from the experts or unusual access; identify information sources; welcome feedback and issue rectification; respects toward audiences; protect confidential of information and lastly use appropriate disclaimers and publish a “term of use” policy.
Another gist from this article is the reality of electronic publishing is always difficult to control centrally, it is important to have trust in employees to communicate with publics. Moreover, it is also often confusing; corporations are always at the risk in controlling its public image. Hence, the corporations are slow in creating policies of new media. However, new technologies are always making corporations in keep tracking of any inappropriate and improper blog entries.
Through all of the guidelines, they give a stand for corporations to develop strategies in communicating with its both internal and external publics through blogs. They encourage corporations to focus on building long-term relationship, add values with readers. After all, these things would allow companies to remain good relationship with their audiences.
