Ten days of hiking, biking, kayaking, swimming, amusement parks and concerts and I am well rested and somewhat ready to return to work:)
While on vacation I read with interest the editorial in BtoB that Forrester Research is reporting that the number of b-to-b blogs started by corporations fell by nearly half from 2006 to 2007 and that the decline in new launches is expected to continue this year.
Why are corporations starting fewer b-to-b blogs? Because they don’t the concept of what a blog is about. A blog is not a place for only new-product happy talk, recycled press releases and customer success stories. Making this content accessible via an RSS button will not make it viral!
Forrester advises marketers to: “[B]uild conversations and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers.” In other words, treat social media as a conference call rather than a billboard.
Paul Gillin of BtoB magazine has a great acronym for social media content called STRAIGHT. STRAIGHT stands for succinct, transparent, responsive, accepting, insightful, genuine, humorous and timely.
Corporate blogs work best when the blog is personalized. The contributors all have names, faces and biographies. They speak in the first person, tell stories and invite response. Look at the successes that Southwest Airlines, the Transportation Security Administration, HP, General Motors Corp. and Marriott are having with b-to-b blogging. They understand the STRAIGHT philosophy and their bloggers are engaged in the conversion with open and honest dialogue.
If you want to have a successful corporate blog you need to let your employees do the talking, not your PR department. Customers and other constituents relate better to people than they do to institutions. That’s the value of blogs. If this whole idea terrifies you, then you’re not yet ready to adopt these tools.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Sante 07.29.08 at 5:37 am
Interesting considerations I believe many of us working with big and small companies can share.
In fact what is often missing is a shift in culture and approach that make blogs “difficult to use”, the approach being “well you guys do whatever is needed to get us good rankings and come back with a report and don’t spend too much”.
The web must play a central role in teh life of a company and unless the approach changes nothing serious can be done with a blog or a website.
FM Days 08.20.08 at 10:43 pm
I have to agree with Forrester. Successful B2B blogging is more about real people in organizations having sincere conversations with all parts of their value chain.
It is just a little scary for the B2B PR types to cede control of the message and the medium.