Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Dave: A personal voice adds to the friendliness of a company, as you say, but what about frequency in posting? My fear is that corporate blogs will be infrequent and poorly handled over time. There is a role for a full-time blog editor/writer, it seems to me, but I'm not sure most companies will make room for it.

Posted by: Jim Horton at July 13, 2004 09:31 AM

Dave: A personal voice adds to the friendliness of a company, as you say, but what about frequency in posting? My fear is that corporate blogs will be infrequent and poorly handled over time. There is a role for a full-time blog editor/writer, it seems to me, but I'm not sure most companies will make room for it.

Posted by: Jim Horton at July 13, 2004 09:31 AM

I think the posting must simply be consistent, not necessarily frequent. Once a week or even once a month is fine. Just so the reader knows what to expect.

Posted by: Alice Marshall at July 13, 2004 10:45 AM

The way we are addressing this for one of my clients is through having multiple authors, each assigned to different topics. The CEO posts about major trends, shows he goes to, customer conversations etc. A development guys posts about technical stuff. Marketing posts about news/trends/reports etc. It works out pretty well, with one post or two per week.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 13, 2004 11:15 AM

Jim: I've thought about this too. Initially there will be many corporate blogs with infrequent postings but if we see a few success stories I think this will change. As corp blogs are widely adopted the best practices that emerge (like Elizabeth's guidelines) will dictate that you post frequently or don't bother with a corporate blog.

Posted by: Dave Austin at July 13, 2004 04:51 PM

When I read this:

Just about every techno-wonk in every type of publication around has written something about how blogs and their associated technologies are going to change everything (yet again).

I knew without having to click to the jump page that the author would provide no evidence, no examples, no proof that the general opinion out there, or even a common opinion out there, or even the opinion of a core group out there is "how blogs and their associated technologies are going to change everything (yet again.)"

Dave: How about examining what someone real, someone who's thought about it, actually says? Your "yet again we're being told blogs will change everything" seems to me not only inaccurate and unsupported (we're supposed to nod and accept it), but itself a form of hype, exaggerated in the most obvious way, just like hype is. It doesn't cut through the clutter and the breathless cliches; it is clutter, and it is a cliche.

I am sure Dave Austin can do much better.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 13, 2004 04:58 PM

Jay,
I know I resorted to a cliche in opening my piece but I'm not attacking blogging at all. The first paragraph is written more along the lines of *I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him*. Maybe I'm wrong to assume that there are people in my audience who fit the cliche of feeling relentlessly bombarded by internet hype, but don't accuse me of concluding that blogs are just more internet hype. My biggest goal in writing this piece was to spark the reader's interest so that they would read more about blogging.

I believe strongly in the power of blogs and I'm doing my best.

Posted by: Dave Austin at July 13, 2004 05:27 PM

Okay, fair enough, Dave. You weren't trying to "diss" blogging. That's clear. But if your message is: don't believe the hype, it should be based on some evidence of the hype around that it is important for people not to believe.

But if it's... "you've heard a lot about blogging, but not why it might really matter to you," then saying it this way gets things off on the right foot. I took it that you were seeking to avoid hype without veering into dismissal.

The problem with using a cliche is not that it's tired or "heard before," or such. It causes you not to look at sharper ideas. People (who know something about it) don't generally say "blogs will revolutionize everything!" But they do point to some places where radically different patterns are in place. Introducing a cliche keeps you from introducing that.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at July 13, 2004 07:15 PM

Jay: I think I misunderstood your comment when I first read it and wrote my reply. I understand you're not accusing me of concluding that blogs are just hype and I hear your point on cliche. While I'm an avid fan of several "techno-wonks" I've met many people who seem to brush off the important things these experts are saying. In writing this piece I was only trying to get the attention of this disinterested audience.

Posted by: Dave Austin at July 13, 2004 07:15 PM

This is my first post to a blog. My apologies if I violate some blogetiquette if such guidelines have been developed. I am interested in how blogging is, and likely will become, used in a business environment. I thus found Dave Austin's "A Very Brief Look..." very informative. In the work I do, I am regularly informing my key clients (information managers, archivists and records managers) about the latest (yet again) information management technology that they are likely to have to deal with from a business records perspective; so I think I understand Dave's "yet again" usage entirely, because the people I talk to are still wrestling down the e-mail and website bears and only beginning to tackle instant messaging. I have been unable to find any discussion of the extent to which private and public sector organizations understand that blogs are organizational records --customer-facing ones, very important records -- that should be captured, managed and disposed of in serious recordkeeping environments just like paper office memos, press releases, e-mail, etc. Is that discussion taking place among the leaders in this field?

Posted by: Rick Barry at July 15, 2004 03:06 PM

Rick: First of all, thank you for jumping into the blogosphere! Secondly, you raise a really important point: recordkeeping.

I would guess that most private/public organizations do not yet have a handle on on the record-keeping aspects of the blogosphere. Actually, I think that is true for web-facing content across the board. If you are willing, I'd love it if you would create a short article about this topic, and I will post it into my own blog, CorporatePR, attributing you as the "guest author" with a ping back to this post. My contact information can be found in the Participant's section.

You also touched on another important challenge facing PR/marketing folks, among others. That is the challenge of keeping up with such rapidly changing technology. In the past, PR people could come to grips with something new, and publish a book about it. Today, change happens so quickly that we are publishing a blog, interacting with our audience in real-time. It kind of makes your head spin! I think this is why it is so important that communities like this one form so people can learn from each other quickly and interactively, vs. passively reading an outdated book.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 16, 2004 06:52 AM

Rick: Thanks for your intelligent comment. This is something that I haven't thought about but will definitely need to be addressed as blogging becomes a common mode of corporate communication. While corporate blogging is still in its infancy, I think we are not getting ahead of ourselves by writing on issues like this, and addressing such practical matters may further help us to understand what we're actually dealing with. I encourage you to take Elizabeth up on her offer and write more on this issue.

Also: I would have replied earlier but this event coincided with my vacation in Montana and I've had a hard time balancing fly-fishing and blogging via dial-up.

Posted by: Dave Austin at July 20, 2004 01:29 PM

Thank you Dave. I admire your priorities. And thanks, Elizabeth. Your point on client/public-facing websites is very true. I will follow up on the request for something on the subject to post on her blog as soon as I can get out from under a few other anchors. In the meantime, I'm very interested to learn more about other ways and other types of organizations in which blogs are being used for business purposes in addition to the excellent examples in Dave's opener and other posts so far. Other examples from participants of PR clients using blogs? Jointly with PR companies? How about closed-access internal uses that we wouldn't easily hear about? Knowing more about usage will also make anything I write on the subject more targeted and relevant to reader interests.

Posted by: Rick Barry at July 20, 2004 11:57 PM

Participants in this blog will be interested in an article in today's New York Times that is summarized by EDUCAUSE below about bloggers being accredited to the national presidential conventions:

Subject: Edupage, July 26, 2004
Date: 7/26/2004 11:59:22 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: EDUCAUSE@EDUCAUSE.EDU
Reply To: edupage-editors@EDUCAUSE.EDU
To: EDUPAGE@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU

BLOGGERS GET PRESS CREDENTIALS
Several dozen Web loggers have received press credentials to cover the
Democratic national political convention this year in Boston, and
organizers of the Republican convention in New York have said they
intend to issue credentials to 10 to 20 bloggers. The chosen bloggers
face a new situation in having access to primary sources for their
blogs rather than, per their usual practice, ferreting out information
from multiple sources or providing commentary based on news coverage of
events. The bloggers expect to cover niche issues and behind-the-scenes
events rather than the larger issues that typically attract the
mainstream news media. Some media experts have expressed reservations
about the shift in the definition of "journalist" to include bloggers,
arguing that journalists should be credentialed professionals.
New York Times, 26 July 2004 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/politics/campaign/26blog.html

Posted by: Rick Barry at July 27, 2004 12:28 AM