BLOGGING: GOOD OR BAD FOR THE BRAND?

by Jason Miletsky

One of the questions that always comes up when I talk to a client about their social media strategies is whether or not blogging is good for the brand. When I dig down a little deeper, the roots of the question become pretty clear: fear.  The basic train of thought is that blogging means allowing user comments, opening the door to negative public messaging, ultimately leading to embarrassment or criticism of the brand.

But that’s the wrong way to look at it. Blogging can be great for a brand, but like anything else when it comes to marketing, you have to do it the right way. This means having a full understanding of blogs and the blogosphere.

While blogs have inspired millions of individuals to tap into their inner writer, they offer far more than simply a personal creative outlet. For businesses, blogs offer an opportunity to reach new and larger audiences in a unique way. For all companies, blogging provides opportunities that other online and offline marketing tools do not:

• Easy provision of information: Updating a blog does not require a highly coordinated effort. In fact, the only real time commitment is the time it takes to create the content. Compared to other forms of marketing communication such as print ads or brochures, which need to go through significant quality-control checks, blogging is a relatively uncomplicated form of wide-scale communications.
• Establishing a more human voice: Most companies speak to their audience through a variety of marketing materials such as brochures, Web sites, radio ads, and TV ads. Each of these is designed to deliver a specific message in marketing language that’s carefully crafted but hardly conversational. Corporate blogs, however, give companies an opportunity to break away from traditional marketing language and speak to consumers directly using a more informal tone. This helps to humanize the brand, making it easier to forge an emotional connection with the audience. Corporate blogs still need to maintain some semblance of their brand voice, but blogging provides significantly more room for relaxed communication than almost any other method of marketing.
• Increased credibility: Because corporate blogs give marketers the opportunity to support their products in their own words while allowing reader feedback, blogs can increase a brand’s credibility with its audience. Product and service claims made in mass-media advertising are traditionally met with a degree of skepticism by the market because they’re viewed as having a single purpose: to sell. A blog, however, gives the brand the opportunity to communicate with its market with a different purpose in mind: to inform. This may come through blog posts that establish the author (a representative of the brand) as a thought leader or expert in a given field, in turn engendering market trust and credibility with consumers.
• Marketing-campaign support: Large-scale marketing campaigns that use a variety of media outlets are typically centered on a unifying theme and promote a message from the brand to its audience. Often, large campaigns incorporate an online component that includes a campaign-based Web site (separate from the brand’s standard corporate site). The addition of a blog lets the brand further promote the campaign, explain the concept behind it, and involve the audience in the campaign by soliciting reader opinions.
• Improved customer service: Customer service is central to any company that needs to maintain long-term relationships with customers. But because it is an expensive endeavor that doesn’t translate directly into increased revenue, many companies see customer-service programs as a necessary evil and often do what they can to decrease the cost of customer service (potentially resulting in poor quality and unhappy customers). Blogs are an inexpensive and effective way for companies to improve their customer service by enabling businesses to proactively tackle issues they know will be problematic and giving customers a forum to ask questions that brand representatives can discuss in a public setting.
• Opportunities to draw a new audience: By promoting a blog through traditional marketing, tags, and listings in blog search engines, corporations can draw audiences they might not otherwise be able to attract. Blogs often include links to other company Web pages to drive traffic to specific areas of the main site for more information or to other pages where products can be purchased.

Clearly, there’s a good case to be made for blogging being a benefit to a brand. And while I’m a fan of blogging as part of a marketing strategy, in fairness, I also have to acknowledge the potential dangers. As I’ve mentioned, branding is about building trust. Making mistakes when blogging can be potentially harmful and, if egregious enough, irreversibly damaging to this trust:

• Lying: People see blogs as honest expressions of opinions and experience. They may vehemently disagree with the opinions that a blog editor expresses—and will say so in comments—but at the very least they believe those opinions are honest. Marketers, however, sometimes create fake blogs, or flogs, in support of their campaign efforts. Flogs are established to trick people into believing that the opinions and stories they are reading are true when in fact the posts are purely marketing-driven content written for the sole purpose of promoting a brand and its products. This can backfire dramatically. Blog readers don’t like to be fooled and will hold the brand accountable for lying. Very often, if the brand that is perpetrating the deception is big enough, they can be persecuted in the media and the blogosphere will spread the word throughout the Web, potentially harming the brand image. I’m not talking about blogs that are clearly fictional. There’s nothing wrong, for example, with Batman having his own blog in support of a campaign to promote an upcoming movie. I’m talking about creating a seemingly independent product-review site and filling it with positive reviews of your brand from made-up users. That kind of thing will never go over well.
• Substandard execution: As with any marketing program, corporate blogs have to be carefully crafted and maintained to build and keep an audience. Brands need to pay close attention to the execution and development of blogs. Companies can do themselves considerable harm by not fully executing their blogging efforts. Some potentially damaging practices include the following:
  • Publishing a blog that is rarely or randomly updated: When a visitor comes to a blog only to see that the last entry was weeks or months ago, he or she will get the impression that nothing important is going on in the company. Obviously, no company would intentionally create such a negative impression.
  • Poorly policing the blog and failing to delete spam: Too many spam generated comments will drive real readers away from the blog and reflect poorly on the brand, which can be seen as sloppy and disorganized.
  • Publishing inconsistent messages: Posting poorly developed content that runs counter to the beliefs, promises, and personality of the brand will ultimately confuse readers as to what the brand is really about.

As mentioned, corporate blogging is a commitment. Even though it is easy and cost-effective, blogs can be digital lightning rods for audiences, and companies need to pay considerable attention to ensure that these audiences are fed information properly.

• Longevity: Although specific entries can be deleted from a blog and blog sites can be shut down entirely, a simple copy-and-paste by a single blog reader can keep a controversial or damaging blog entry alive and in the blogosphere forever after. Like a politician running for office, every brand has its enemies, all looking for an opportunity to tarnish its image. Brands should be sure that each entry they post will position their brand in a positive light in both the short and long term because often, there simply isn’t any erasing of old mistakes.
• Representation: Whoever does the writing for a corporate brand becomes the voice of that brand, and any opinions expressed by that representative will be seen by readers as the official position of the brand. A single misstep or a poorly worded blog entry can do untold damage to a brand.

So here it is, after all that, my list of what you need to do to get a successful blog up and running:

• Update content regularly: Once you decide to maintain and promote a blog, you need to make a commitment to keep the blog updated with new entries. The frequency of new entries is partially determined by the amount of traffic that comes to the site—the more traffic, the more new entries should be posted. At the very least, new content needs to be added on a scheduled basis so that readers know when to expect it. Posting entries on a seemingly random basis or missing scheduled updates is a sure way to lose core visitors who can easily become confused or indifferent, taking their blog-reading elsewhere. (Before you call me a hypocrite, I am well aware that I regularly break this rule on the Perspectives blog, and my agency’s blog.)
• Maintain a friendly but brand-oriented voice: Blogs offer companies the opportunity to communicate in a friendlier, more conversational tone—but take care to avoid letting this more casual style dilute the image and lifestyle that the brand represents. A tone of voice that is so informal that it runs contrary to the brand image can actually work against the company, detract from other marketing efforts, and drive away customers. Successful marketing is about having control over the message. Blogging, with its conversational style and open forum for responses, can reduce the control a marketer has over the message, so extra attention needs to be paid to ensure that the blog is friendly but still brand-oriented.
• Keep content relevant: For the most part, blogs are based on a central theme, as determined by the blog writer. This makes it easier for readers to find the blogs that they are most interested in. Writers should know that readers will come to their blog because they’re interested or curious about that particular brand and/or the industry in general. It is important for marketers to remain on topic and not deviate from the stated focus of the blog.
• Don’t (completely) ghost-write blog posts: While the content of a blog is important, so is the name behind the blog. Like a TV news anchor whom viewers tune into because they have come to trust him or her, the validity of a blog post will often rest on the shoulders of its author—and it’s not uncommon for readers to examine the blog author’s biography. Blogs by definition are meant to be more personal and intimate. Once readers (or worse, the media) catch on to the fact that a blog is being ghost-written, there could be a severe backlash, causing audiences to question any future statements or claims by that company. At the same time, it’s impractical to think that people in high-profile positions will really have the time to write their own blogs. Hell, even politicians have speeches written by someone else. At the very least, if a blog is going to be written on someone’s behalf, the person whose name is attached to the blog should review each post and sign off on it prior to it being published.
• Don’t sell, and don’t be too quick to delete: Blogs are meant to provide insight and opinion, personal thoughts, or expert advice that other people can benefit from. They are not meant to be straightforward sales pitches, which are best left for advertisements or the content on a company’s primary Web site. Blogging can work in a company’s favor as long as the subtle connection between information and trust is maintained and allowed to unfold and the direct-sales route is avoided. Similarly, because blogs are meant to be public forums where readers can comment on each post, it’s important that bloggers allow negative comments to appear as readily as they allow positive ones. While it’s fine to delete rude or baseless attacks (such as “This company is terrible”) and especially fine to delete spam tinged comments, marketers must be careful to avoid deleting comments simply because they offer a dissenting opinion. Consumers want to judge the quality of the content themselves and will put more trust in a brand that provides all the ideas available—including ones that work counter to the company’s goal—than companies that “stack the deck” by providing only the comments they want readers to see.

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