Blogs gaining traction within corporations

It is the human element that makes blogs a fascinating and enabling alternative for the inhuman interactions that characterize most dealings with corporations. An opportunity here is for corporations to do something novel and wonderful. General blogs open to authors within organizations can be used for talking about what they do and their lives – personal and corporate. Private blogs can be enabled for privileged conversations within groups of stakeholders – say between Boards and executives. And member only blogs – for those willing to pay through fee or who purchase goods or services get access to support or services not available otherwise.

Blogs are a conduit and mechanism to seed communications with the communities that matter. They will evolve, improve and enhance a corporation’s ability to present their worldview and represent company interests, missions and philosophies. Blogs enable different, diffuse and perhaps more effective means of expression. As long as the PR and marketing people don’t get control of the accounts, it very well might foster effective communications, far beyond the dry messages and slogans that are relentlessly spun to dross.

The tried and true marketing and PR departments may one day make the endangered species list thanks to a rush of corporate interest in blogs and RSS feeds.

Weblogging -- or blogging -- is taking social networking to new heights. And with the improvements to the technology, the personal journals are now supplying tens of millions of bits of information every day. Now multi-million dollar corporations looking for cheap and effective ways of getting their message out are using the technology to their advantage.

Probably too much to hope for - PR and marketing departments becoming endangered species. Their chameleon personalities enable their survival and insure their continuing roles within modern corporations. An ironically hype-titled article about the phenomena can be found in this internetnews.com story: Blogs: The Marketing Killer

According to the story, blogs are becoming increasingly common within technology corporations and will likely accelerate a trend among corporations to adopt and actively maintain bi-directional communication with customers, clients, vendors, partners and stakeholders. Interestingly enough, reflecting the genealogy of most technology companies, it seems to be very egalitarian - that is there doesn't seem to be many organizations (outside of media - print and electronic) which prevent their employees from expressing themselves in these communal and very public venues.

That feature probably won't last. At some point, the PR people will rise up and smote any disparaging words or dissenting opinions from disgruntled employees, disavow any communication not explicitly sanctioned and generally try and control the content of communications through official channels. That is, they will make blogs just like the rest of their corporate spinning - bland, devoid of controversy, mainstream and indistinguishable from other corporate communications.

And that would be a shame. Blogs can be a wonderful way to show interested parties how, what, why, where and who. Blogs put a human face to largely faceless corporations. And as more customer service tends toward VRUs and other computer generated personas, the ability to actually communicate and interact with humans is an invaluable approach to connecting with customers and clients. To render it devoid of meaningful insights, opinions and anchors within the organization would be a tragedy.

Comments

[Pogo]

Let me express my skepticism. Remember that corporations are not democracies, and are better viewed as feudal feifdoms or dictatorships. Their hallmark is intolerance of dissent and a need to maintain power at every level.

That is, if the innovation doesn't tend to serve the personal interests or careers of the folks in the highest levels of a heierarchy, it will not be adopted (even if said innovation is prone to increasing profits). While there may be early-adopters of these blogs in the business world, I'll be surprised if it sees mainstream popularity. The process is too egalitarian and elusive of power to be tolerated for long.