D. Murali & C. Ramesh

Everybody’s blogging these days. Or so they say. Do they? More importantly, should they, especially if they are businesses? These questions and a myriad others are answered by Jeremy Wright in Blog Marketing, a book that tells you everything you needed to know about blogging but didn’t know which consultant to ask. Business Line caught up with Jeremy Wright on how important it is for businesses to embrace the phenomenon of blogging, which has transformed the corporate communications landscape. Excerpts:

Will blogging responsibilities be outsourced by corporates, the way PR and advertising are?

Definitely. While there’s nothing “wrong” with outsourcing blogging, much like PR, it tends to lose some of its “magic.” When you outsource blogging it ends up sounding intensely impersonal (because it is!). Still, this will become fairly standard practice because blogging internally would cause a slight shift in corporate culture and perspective – a shift many companies will try to avoid.

Microsoft’s most famous blogger was Robert Scoble. But he has left the company. Isn’t it risky for a corporate to attach too much importance to non-official blogs?

That’s an interesting question. It comes down to this: if Microsoft had never let Scoble be Scoble, they’d still be perceived the same way today as they were five years ago. But because they let him have his own voice, the perception of Microsoft changed. For some it was a slight change, for others it was quite drastic. Either way, thanks to Scoble there are now more than 5,000 Microsoft employees blogging publicly, which is a fairly significant shift at the company.

If done properly, with clear boundaries, most companies should find greater employee satisfaction, better support and an improvement in customer satisfaction by running a well-managed employee blogging campaign. The benefits of these far outweigh the potential loss of losing a rockstar blogger to another company sometime in the future.

Should corporates hire people exclusively for the purpose of blogging?

That is certainly a direction some corporations are starting to go – whether it’s Blogger Relations team members that exist as part of marketing, or Social Media professionals who work in sales or corporate communications.

On the other side, some companies are simply training their sales/ marketing/ PR/ communications teams on blogging principles so that they can engage in the activities themselves (instead of having dedicated folk).

Ultimately, the best mix will depend on each company’s corporate culture and whether an individual champion for blogging would work best or a properly trained team would.

You have written (in the book) about Bob Lutz of GM setting an example in blogging. Should all top executives take it up?

Blogging definitely isn’t for all executives. It tends to take up time (2-4 hours per week on average). But more than that, the reality is that not all executives are very good communicators. We think we are, of course, but the problem is that only truly great communicators are likely to succeed in blogging.

In addition, many executives have lost a true sense of passion, authority and responsibility – things that are absolutely key for successful blogging. That doesn’t mean executives can’t blog – it’s just that being an executive doesn’t automatically qualify you for blogging, but neither does it disqualify you.

Whether a particular team member is an employee, contractor or executive isn’t the point; the point is to write an engaging blog that people will actually read.

Blogging is suddenly cool and trendy, also seen as a fad. Is there a danger in corporates adopting it simply for this reason?

No corporation should ever adopt something simply because it’s cool or a fad. The catastrophes around CRM and ERP software in the 90s and early ‘00s are classic examples of why this is the case.

Blogging is a corporate and internal communications tool. It is inherently powerful because it invites other people to respond and participate in whatever conversation is going on. As a result, companies need to approach this just as they would approach any other major external or internal communications project.

Set goals, set metrics, make people responsible, review the success of the project, empower team members. Only by treating it properly as a project can companies avoid the standard pitfalls associated with joining a trendy new fad.

How serious a threat is the blog to the newspaper as a means of disseminating information? Has it arrived as an additional media tool?

Blogs are actually a perfect complement to newspapers. Many successful western magazines and newspapers (Time.com and the New York Times being two of the biggest) have truly embraced blogging. The reason is simple: news stories are constrained by two things: deadlines and deadlines.

On the front end, the requirement to publish a certain number of pieces per week means that journalists can only write about the juiciest stuff – and even then only when they have a complete story. On the back end, deadlines mean that once they cover a story, they never go back to it.

Blogging allows journalists to explore stories before they are full stories. And it also allows them to continue working on a story after it’s been published. This dynamic means that stories live longer, journalists develop deep ties to the core people involved in the story and they also develop a very real authority on specific subject matters. It’s hard to see how allowing journalists to blog is actually a bad thing!

Isn’t the line between corporate blog and PR exercise too thin? How does a company tread it?

The best way to tread the line is to have the corporate blog be run by one team and PR by another. The blog team’s job should be to express opinion, show passion and give a window into the company. The PR team’s job is to do larger announcements and get media play day in and day out.

The teams will obviously work together on occasion (PR team could announce a big new product, blog team could interview the folk behind it), but maintaining the distinction means that PR is able to properly do their job without worrying about the muddiness of blogging – while also empowering the blogging team to truly find a voice without having to worry about the PR implications.