Is your company ready to blog?

A well-executed business blog is a 24-hour opportunity to interact with customers, impress Wall Street, spark business-to-business opportunities, track industry trends, spot brand deterioration and spook competitors, all maintained at a low-rent cyber address. Does your company have one? Speaker Toby Bloomberg explored the marketing potential of the blogosphere at the Compete Through Service symposium sponsored by the W. P. Carey School's Center for Services Leadership.

The first thing you need to know about Toby Bloomberg is that she's mad for corporate blogs. She monitors more than a hundred electronically via search engines and actually reads dozens of the "Web logs" daily. We're talking everything from corporate heavyweights like Microsoft, McDonalds and General Motors to the American Cancer Society, Maytag, Honeywell and lesser-known concerns like Indium Corp. of America.

Bloomberg holds that a well-executed business blog is part marketing, part magic — a 24-hour opportunity to interact with customers, impress Wall Street, spark business-to-business opportunities, track industry trends, spot brand deterioration and spook competitors, all maintained at a low-rent cyber address.

The author of Diva Marketing Blog, Bloomberg also is president of Bloomberg Marketing in Atlanta, Georgia, and an adjunct professor at Emory University's Goizueta School of Business, where she teaches management consulting.

Tradition vs. the blog

She uses a PowerPoint screen with two graphics to explain the difference between traditional marketing and corporate blogging. In the first, drawn circa 1959, two tidy women wearing tightly-belted dresses and high heels sit at a kitchen table, sharing tips on housecleaning over a cup of coffee.

In the second, a flat-panel computer screen shows a professionally dressed man and woman shaking hands; their images are manipulated so that they're actually too big for the screen, though, and are half in, half out of the display screen, apparently climbing out to get the deal inked now. Back in the day, marketing plans were generally based on introducing potential customers to a product or service via a brief encounter of some sort.

But in the blogging model, the conversation is ongoing, not episodic, and the pool of potential customers immeasurably more vast. Most importantly, though, blogging — more formally known as "social media" — offers peer-to-peer interaction, because even if the company CEO ostensibly writes the blog, non-CEOs participate in the information-sharing via comments, trackbacks and posting links.

For the biggest firms, blogging warms and humanizes their bland, P.R.-managed image. An example is Jonathan Schwartz, the pony-tailed chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems, who writes a highly readable blog, even answering readers' questions, like this recent exchange:

Reader: "Why'd you paint the prototype Blackbox black — won't that absorb more radiant solar heat and worsen cooling challenges?"

Schwartz: "Sorry to disappoint, but we painted it black because it looked cool for the launch event, that's all. Customers can paint them whatever color they want (or leave them unpainted)."

For smaller companies, blogging can bring recognition. Some, like Indium Corp. of America, are using a popular employee's blog to boost their image far past its pre-blogging industry niche. The Clinton, New York, company's products include indium metal, fusible alloys, circuit-board assembly components and semi-conductor packaging.

Ronald Lasky has a blog on the company's Web site. Recent posts covered speakers at an international electronic assembly conference, his golf scores, the formula for calculating alloy density and a rant about eight-dollar-a-minute rates for international phone calls placed from hotels. Bloomberg, who's obviously not a big consumer of circuit-board assembly components, is a frequent reader. "He's interesting and personable," she explained. "His blog gave him a high profile in electronic assembly and brought in clients and goodwill."

At the same time, blogging, both personal and corporate, has wrenched brand control from the very corporations that spent millions grooming a particular image for their products and services, Bloomberg noted. Her favorite example is the famous Mentos-Diet Coke video shot by a couple of guys who noticed that dropping Mentos candies into Diet Coke produces a geyser. They posted their video online, where it attracted tons of attention.

Someone in Mentos' marketing department seized the moment, hailing the video's appeal, applauding the amateur videographers and eventually hosting their own "Mentos Geyser Video Contest" online. More than 150 videos were submitted, prizes awarded, and the original videographers, known as EepyBird, are partnering with Mentos and Blue Man Group to create a video that will be featured on Blue Man's "How to be a Megastar Tour."

Although Coca-Cola is now sponsoring its own video contest, Bloomberg said initially the company's marketing staff backed away from the foaming feature even as Mentos embraced the notoriety. "Mentos loved it and used it. Coke didn't get it, didn't like it, and only recently realized it needed to be part of the conversation," she continued.

Navigating the blogosphere

Like Coke and Mentos, a growing number of companies are learning how important it is to monitor their brand's experience in the blogosphere. Using Technorati.com or Feedster.com, or even Google alerts, it's easy enough to follow what people are saying about your products. "Analyzing the results can cue the company as to what aspects of their brand resonate with the customer, what they like or dislike," Bloomberg added.

Once you know the blogosphere buzz about your company, you then have five options, she said:

1. ignore it;
2. Aggressively fight back against negativity;
3. Leverage the buzz to support your corporate strategy;
4. Co-create with buzz partners, or
5. Join the conversation.

Bloomberg uses another simple example of the power of corporate blogging. Someone at Unilever, maker of Degree Sport Solid deodorant, picked up a blogger's comments about how he could no longer find his favorite deodorant in local stores. The Unilever fellow contacted the blogger, then sent him a case of the longed-for Degree Sport Solid. The blogger wrote about the company's response, referencing the first blog entry, and other blogs picked up the story, further enhancing Unilever's reputation.

Frequently, buzz that starts on someone's blog makes it into a story in the mainstream media. Bloomberg wrote about a dissatisfying online encounter with Jupiter Research; the company refused to share source or reference material backing up study results. Bloomberg's blog entry about the disputed Jupiter Research study was picked up by Technorati and eventually mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.

Blogging in general — not just corporate blogging — continues to grow in popularity. As of October 12, 2006, there were 56.8 million blogs online. Lately, the number of blogs has been doubling every few months, she said.

How do you know if your company is ready to blog? First, answer these questions: Will a blog help solve a problem or support a business challenge? Who will write it? Can the blog be integrated into existing marketing plans? Will your company's culture support the blog's strategy? Wait — back up a bit. What is your blog's strategy? How will the blog be marketed?

And finally, do you understand the blogsphere enough to exploit brand manipulation opportunities? "It can be a lot of work, but the benefits of corporate blogging are enormous, because you create and maintain trusted relationships that build brand recognition, while providing a customer feedback vehicle," Bloomberg said.

Bottom Line:

• Organizations with corporate blogs include Microsoft, McDonalds, General Motors, the American Cancer Society, Maytag and Honeywell, to name just a few.
• Mentos capitalized on a blogosphere video to build brand recognition, reaping largely free advertising thanks to a couple of amateur videographers who inspired peers to participate in a video contest.
• As of October 12, 2006, there were 56.8 million blogs online. Lately, the number of blogs has been doubling every few months.