Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Niall Cook, Netcoms, Hill & Knowlton | weblog: Marketing Technology
EDITORS’ CHOICE | Building Blogging Communities

Hill & Knowlton has been advising clients about consumer generated content since the early 1990s when the possibility of global publishing became available to anyone with the right technical skills. Initially Usenet posts and ‘attack’ sites from disgruntled customers and employees were the norm. The growth in internet usage and, critically, the spread of simple platforms has created the blogging phenomenon that represents the current stage of this self publishing revolution.

We knew we needed to counsel clients about blogs – from both the points of view of brand promotion and of corporate reputation. But the blogosphere in early 2005 wasn’t the same as what we encountered in 1995. Following the ‘walk before you talk’ principle, we decided we needed to learn first hand what was going on and how to get it right in practice.

Early on, the majority of blogging was just personal publishing, so some staff joined in on an individual basis, principally from our Netcoms interactive practice. As interest in the medium developed, we saw the benefits of a single business blogging community over a disparate collection of individual blogs.

A branded ‘collective publishing’ environment would make it easy for our different subject, sector and geography communications experts to expose their insights for colleagues, clients and others to read, but there was also a potential conflict between individual rights and preferred best practice.

We embarked on a three-step process:

1. Put advice and guidelines in place that would encourage employees to experiment with blogging on a personal basis, whilst ensuring they were aware of the commercial or legal consequences of what they might write
2. Create a business blogging community that would allow any employee to write a blog under the Hill & Knowlton brand
3. Advise clients credibly about blogs and other consumer generated media, using the learning from the previous steps.

Experimenting with technology

Our choice of software was not as well planned as we would have liked. On reflection we may have done this at the wrong point in the cycle, but we knew roughly what we needed (the usual blog features, skinnable themes, multiple blogs, multiple authors and aggregation functions). We also knew we preferred a Microsoft .NET solution to fit with our existing business applications strategy. That pretty much restricted us to one choice – Community Server from Telligent Solutions. Started as an open source project (.Text) by Scott Watermasysk, it has developed into a commercial application (although personal and non-commercial versions are free). It is highly customisable and, barring one or two exceptions, has been simple and quick to implement.

Two initial blogs were created to test the system over a long period. The first was that of Niall Cook and a second was set up to test multiple author blogging for the Netcoms practice in the UK that he heads.

Once we knew the platform was solid, we turned our attention to policies and process. It was here that the interesting debates arose – and as it turned out, ones we had initially overlooked.

Setting policy and process

We started out under the assumption that we would have a simple code of practice and let any member of staff create a blog for whatever purpose they wished, but our Chief Marketing Officer, Tony Burgess-Webb, had other ideas. He identified the need to address four key variables: access, control, propensity and quality, each of which could impact on our brand.

Access vs. Control

We decided to identify who within our organisation would be allowed to create a blog (access) and the level of control we wanted to exert over its content (control). We believed that the overall value of the community would increase exponentially with the number of blogs created, so our recommendation was for wide access. Control was a more difficult debate, as it could take many forms. We finally agreed that we should not use any kind of moderation or systematic monitoring, but a simple code of practice and trust in our staff would ensure they became accountable for what they wrote .

Propensity vs. Quality

We moved on to address the correlation between the likelihood of staff actually blogging (propensity) and the quality of what they would write. Our hypothesis was that those with the most interesting insights would probably be so busy that they wouldn’t have the time or inclination to maintain a blog; and those that were extremely keen and eager – and with lots of time – might not have anything especially insightful to say. Whilst clearly a generalisation (we know we have both extremely experienced consultants who would participate, and high-calibre graduates and other entrants with some excellent business thinking), this was in direct contrast to the desired result we wanted to achieve for the brand.

Blogtypes

This led to the development of four blogging ‘personas’ that we eventually used as part of the internal registration process. We purposely gave them tongue-in-cheek labels to emphasise their provisional and ‘caricature’ nature:

1. Blogstar! – those with both motivation and clear value to add
2. Budding blogger – those with a clear focus but no desire to share their thoughts on a blog
3. Why bother blogging? – those with those with neither desire or a topic to write about
4. Blogger beware – those with little focus but a strong desire to be involved

Our decision about access meant that we would not stop anyone from taking part, but we needed a way to help people profile themselves so they could really think about whether it was something they wanted to do, rather than just getting involved for the sake of it. A self assessment element to the online registration process provided the answer.

Available for all to see, our bloggers must profile themselves before proceeding with their application. We do not collect individual responses, but we do track the proportion of each profile both for those who have applied and all responses. The current results have been published internally.

Cracking the code

The final step in the registration process was to develop a simple code of practice that we could display.

Contrary to some coverage, this isn’t our employee blogging policy. We made that available to the blogging community after it was shared with staff.

The next step was to announce the community, internally and externally. An internal memo from the CMO encouraging staff to sign up was sufficient to raise internal awareness, and rather than issue press releases we announced the launch on our own blogs (some before others!) and contacted some of the key PR bloggers who we knew would put the word out. To our amazement, we were contacted before we even got the chance to tell our own staff about it (no names required Steve, you know who you are!), providing another example of how a single entity has no control the blogosphere.

Fame and fortune?

Although it wasn’t our main intent, we’ve had some great publicity. As well as a hatful of blog posts, we have already had pieces in trade papers on both sides of the Atlantic, and an offer to present at a conference.

Internal take up has been about what we expected having launched in the middle of summer vacation time (i.e. slow). On one hand it shows that our profiling approach has stopped people from just signing up for the sake of it, but on the other it’s a shame not to be welcoming more of our colleagues to the “conversation�. It’s still early days, and we’re being a little more proactive in targeting some of the people we know would be interesting, entertaining, or controversial.

We’ve come a long way and learnt a lot but know we have an even longer journey ahead. It’s an experience we’d encourage any organisation looking at corporate blogging – particularly those who offer professional services – to consider.

There are three key components we recommend:

Analysis
Watch what peers are doing, but don’t just limit this to the usual competitors. Innovation and insight can come from any organisation in any sector. Learn from it and adapt it to your own business.

Advice
The ease of technological implementation upon which many blogging ‘experts’ pitch their offers belies the complex business, marketing and communications decisions that have to be made. Proper advice and planning will save time, money and damage to your reputation in the long term.

Action
We’d encourage any business that has made the decision to set up a corporate blogging community to experiment. But consider the risks in the same way as other business decisions, and do it on a small scale first.

About the author

Niall Cook heads Hill & Knowlton’s online communication practice (Netcoms) in the UK, and has worldwide responsibility for many of the firm’s internal and external business applications. He is a senior adviser to many Hill & Knowlton clients and manages a global technology portfolio that supports internal business processes, new business and marketing, and client service. He has expertise in business transformation, creative and marketing technology, enterprise portals, professional services automation, and usability and user interface design. Niall has written extensively on online PR, with articles in Revolution and the PRCA’s Frontline magazine. He has also been a guest lecturer at Syracuse University and has spoken at numerous industry events. Prior to joining Hill & Knowlton in July 2000, he worked at beenz.com, Answerthink, UBS, and Reed Elsevier.

{ tags: prblogweek, pr, agencies, business, blogging, communities, hill+knowlton, case+studies }