Should You Have A Blog?

By Ben Garfinkel Of Industrial Brand Creative.

In the early to mid 1990s the Internet was hitting the mainstream and clients were asking the same questions about websites as they are now about blogs and blogging, specifically, “what is it, and how do I get one?” It was often up to the design/marketing/ad agency to define and disseminate this new knowledge, evaluate opportunities and apply their clients’ brands to this new medium where appropriate. Agencies were just as excited as their clients and thrilled to experiment with and exploit the Internet on their behalf. There were few rules and the Internet was new, young and sexy. Who wouldn’t want to fool around with that?

The difference between then and now is in our approach to the technology as a medium, both in terms of our level of sophistication and its commercial potential. Yes, people and corporations will – and are – finding ways to make money in the blogosphere, but it’s not on the same old terms. Sure you can sell advertising space on a blog, and others are getting paid to write about products (though usually with full disclosure), but the greatest advantage of blogging for businesses is in forming a dialogue with customers.

And not just any dialogue: an open, honest, personal, relevant and appropriate voice for the company. Indeed, a blog is a phenomenal opportunity to build a business and enhance your brand by talking to people who actually want to hear from you. You know who’s doing this so well they are the most often cited example of this? Microsoft. Specifically, Robert Scoble. Robert has carte blanche to talk candidly and critically about Microsoft without giving away corporate secrets. He has single-handedly changed people’s perceptions about Microsoft and provided a personal face to what has been in the past an impersonal monolith.

For a smaller company, blogs are truthful, honest representations of the people behind them and thus an important communication tool. As principal of a moderately sized and established design agency in Vancouver, I can safely say that we have never been described as impersonal or monolithic. In fact, we’re quite the opposite. Like almost all other design firms, we feature a selected portfolio and profile on our website. To the trained eye, it gives a decent idea of our capabilities, but a visit to our blog (which you are already on) provides insight into what moves us, inspires us, makes us laugh, dream and desire. In aggregate form, it’s a deeper peek into who we are, not just what we do.

On this topic, Jim Coudal, partner of the design firm Coudal Partners, has this to say:

“…I answered the question ’should my business have a weblog?’ like this. If you need to make copies of documents you should have a Xerox machine and if you have information about your product or service that needs to be updated regularly then you should have a blog. But the really interesting question is this, ‘Should my blog have a business?’ The old idea is to create a product and go looking for a market. ‘If you build it they will come.’ The minute we saw this equation from the other side we knew what we had to do. Without realizing it, we had already built the audience, now we needed to create a product for it. ‘If they come, you will build it.’”

This was the case with our Industrial Brand blog as well. We had an audience with our Flash site and the content and culture to blog. We also had good reasons to build a blog: the advantages of better search engine rankings and it would allow us to inform, share and entertain with the same content we previously kept to ourselves. Not only that, it’s archived so anyone can access it anytime either chronologically or with a built-in search engine. More than just regurgitated content from the world around us, our blog also provides a venue for us to publish our own opinions. We no longer rely solely on traditional media to position ourselves in the minds of our clients, prospects, colleagues and others. We’ve gone from having a relatively static Flash site with a small audience, to over 30,000 unique visitors a month, all within the space of ten months. With our growing audience and an increasingly confident voice, this is a perfect example of how blogging has given rise to a power shift from the business and mainstream media establishment to the people.

Goliath, meet David.

A distinguishing mark of a good blog is an informal style of writing often injected with the personality of the blogger(s). In fact, it’s the personal voice, accountability and the transparent nature of blogging that has helped it soar in popularity over the past year or so. Free software like Blogger make it incredibly easy for anyone to have a blog, and a browse through a blog indexing site such as Technorati is clear evidence of this – over 19 million blogs and counting are being tracked there.

With blogging so easy to do and the credible nature of blogs in general, corporations must take note that the balance of power is shifting to the consumer, and customer service issues are shifting from private to public forums on an increasing basis. Goliath, meet David.

In the good old days – about two years ago – if you had issues with a company’s product or service a well placed threat to boycott them and use the competition was usually all it took to get some attention. These days, threaten them with a blog and the reaction will be swift. That is, if they know what a blog is.

Immediately following the release of Apple Computer’s much anticipated iPod Nano, complaints began to surface about the susceptibility of the case to scratches and issues with cracking LCD screens. One individual took the issue straight to his blog. Titled flawedmusicplayer.com (mirrored here), the blog took no time to initiate and by all accounts was stirring up a blogstorm. So much so that Apple took notice. Clearly not naive when it comes to online culture and its cult-like, word-of-mouth-driven customer base, Apple took this seriously and reportedly made amends with this owner, who subsequently took down the site. However, Apple also quickly and proactively quelled this uprising with a public offer to replace similarly affected nanos.

Blogs by their very nature are particularly well-suited for the purpose of consumer activism. They are also hubs for communication between like-minded individuals, and thus marketers will begin to look for ways to reach these easily identifiable targets. Yet, to succeed in blogging, corporations have to play by the rules or suffer the consequences (check out what happened to McDonalds with their Lincoln Fry Blog and Mazda’s failed blogging attempt). Both of these fake blogs were trashed in the blogosphere and later in the mainstream media as thinly disguised traditional marketing efforts. In this new world of full-disclosure, these companies showed that they just didn’t get it. Had they created fake websites I doubt anyone would have raised an eyebrow. So why did people react so negatively? Because blogs are about being truthful…at least for now.

So, how else can corporations screw up in the blogosphere?

Last year a story broke on the internet about how it’s possible to open a Kryptonite lock in seconds using just a Bic pen. The story spread through the Blogosphere faster than a fire in a paper factory. In fact, several weeks went by before the mainstream media picked up the story and by then most of the damage was done. Hugh McLeod of gapingvoid provided this humourous play-by-play on the story that he’s dubbed “The Kryptonite Factor“:

DAY ONE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.

DAY TWO:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.

DAY THREE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm… yeah I’m sure they are, but what’s all this about some recent video on the net that’s supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?

DAY FOUR:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend’s website. And I’m kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I’m wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not… does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?

DAY FIVE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?

DAY SIX:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they’re not. You guys are assholes.

Blogging as a credible source of information

How did this spread so quickly? Because blogs are conversations, and this was a hot topic. Because sincerity is the basis of blogging, the sources of information were seen as credible. Certainly more credible than the static corporate website.

So far this has cost Kryptonite millions and millions of dollars and their reputation as the premier manufacturer of solid, secure locks took a serious hit. Had Krypotonite’s management not drastically underestimated the power of the blogosphere, they might have been able to mitigate some of the effects of this PR nightmare.

In researching this incident further, I had the good fortune to discover a blog entry by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble. It seems they are writing a book on how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with consumers. Kryptonite was to be the headliner in ‘Chapter 10 – Doing it Wrong’ until they had a conversation with Kryptonite’s PR manager about the incident that offers some interesting and compelling insights into their side of the story.

In hindsight, Kryptonite does admit they should have been more responsive to the blogosphere and their own website during the crises, and as a result may have become somewhat of a sacrificial lamb in the ‘what not to do’ category. However, this highly publicized episode has actually enhanced the rapid growth of blogging and helped corporations seeking entré into the world of blogging by giving a terrific case study. It shows that in a world with a blogosphere, corporations cannot rely on the old ways of thinking and traditional marketing and advertising techniques to communicate with consumers. It should be interesting to see if the blogosphere is as efficient at rebuilding a reputation as it is in breaking one down.

The appeal of blogging is universal, from people blogging about their cat to large corporations having their say. Small businesses are discovering the benefits and opportunities, yet it’s amazing how often I’m getting asked, “So, what is a blog anyway?” The shocking part is that these are people I’d have expected to have a blog or maybe reading a dozen or more by now, not asking what one is. Blogs aren’t even a new phenomenon (techies were blogging in the late 90’s). The other day my mother even asked me the same question. I knew right then the word “blog” had reached the mainstream and that the party has only just begun.

As blogging emerges from its infancy, the likely scenario is that as corporations learn to navigate the blogosphere they will also figure out ways to manipulate and yes, even corrupt this mostly pure media form. For now, the power balance remains in the hands of the people and the most successful of the corporate bloggers will first work within the system and then play a role in defining its future.

Blogging isn’t really about the software applications that make it possible, it’s about sharing ideas, having something to say and putting an authentic piece of yourself or your company out there whether the intended audience is one person or several thousand. Perhaps the answer to the question, “Should I have a blog?” is another question: “Do I have something to say?”

SIDEBAR: So, what is a blog?

If you’re one of those in the dark about what a blog is, Wikipedia has a great definition:

A blog or weblog (derived from web + log) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). Although most early blogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of “blogging”.

Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs, and corporations. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author (known as a blogger), to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments, which can lead to a community of readers centered around the blog; others are non-interactive. The totality of weblogs or blog-related websites is often called the blogosphere. When a large amount of activity, information and opinion erupts around a particular subject or controversy in the blogosphere, it is sometimes called a blogstorm or blog swarm.

Additionally, Seth Godin, entrepreneur, author, “agent of change” and influential blogger, has composed a free PDF document titled, “Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web”. If you’re interested in more information and insight into blogging, it’s highly recommended reading.