The blogging revolution

Blogging has been described as an even more revolutionary medium than the internet. Richard Brass explores the popular concept, discovering how corporates intend to make blogs work for them

You could easily be forgiven for thinking that the old industrial town of Colne in east Lancashire, UK, is a long way from the leading edge of anything. It may have been a powerhouse of cotton manufacturing 200 years ago, but the best one local tourist website can find to say about the town now is: 'Close to the motorway system, it has many shops'.

But, unassuming as it may seem, Colne is at the forefront of a worldwide communications revolution. Besides its many shops, the town is home to Butler Sheetmetal Ltd, and in the fast-moving, high-tech, real-time world known as the blogosphere, that's about as leading-edge as it gets, because the weblog of this small metal-bashing company at the foot of the Pennines is setting the standard for corporate blogging.

Once the preserve of the technology professionals driving the development of the internet, in the past few years weblogging has undergone an exponential expansion that has led some observers to describe it as more revolutionary than the arrival of the net itself. The daily ruminations and observations of anyone from researchers in the Antarctic and journalists in Iraq to home brewers and deskbound navel-gazers are all available for global perusal and response, and are joined by thousands more every day.

The appeal for business is undeniable. Here is a medium of communication that costs next to nothing to produce and is accessible instantly around the world. Surely the blog is the perfect channel through which to tell a grateful public about your company and your products? And, if all it takes is one person typing away at a computer, just think of the possible savings on the marketing budget.

But, sadly for many companies, it's not as easy as that, and many firms' attempts at corporate blogging have been embarrassing failures that have done nothing for their sales or profile. That's where Butler Sheetmetal of Colne stands out. This little company's weblog, The Tinbasher, has become internationally renowned in the blogging community as an outstanding example of corporate use of the form and has just been named Small Business Blog of 2005.

Its author, Paul Woodhouse, manages to combine conversation about the company and its products with commentary on all manner of other topics and odd details from his own life, and delivers the lot with wit, warmth and a sense of authenticity which is the key to a successful blog, and which has made it favoured reading among the growing hordes of blog aficionadoes.

Authenticity is the biggest hurdle for companies trying to work out how to make effective use of blogs. Companies tend to approach blogging from a PR perspective, and the central point of PR - adding spin or gloss to a less-than-glossy reality - does not sit very well in the bare, transparent world of the weblog. It could even be argued that the immediate, unvarnished, stream-of-consciousness style of a blog, and its invitation to public response - however negative - is the direct opposite of PR.

Companies that have succeeded with blogs are those that have been prepared to change their approach to the form. In the US, where, unlike in the UK, corporate blogging is past the first stage of infancy, a number of big companies, primarily in the IT industry, have given their employees a free rein when it comes to blogging, totally at odds with the message-controlling ethos of PR professionals.

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems were among the first to embrace the possibilities of the form, and both now actively encourage their employees to set up blogs. One Microsoft staffer, Robert Scoble, has become the best known figure in the blogosphere since he began his regular postings four years ago, and he and his colleagues at all levels in the company have built a reputation as the best internal source of information about products and what's going on within the company, more reliable and accessible than any press release or official announcement, as well as humanising a company often regarded as a big baddie.

The Microsoft approach has spread fast within the tech world, with many companies overcoming concerns about the damage this kind of openness could do and allowing their employees to let rip. For tech companies, embracing the communication possibilities of the very technology they are creating has an obvious PR pay-off. But, for companies in other industries, using this tool requires an entirely new approach to marketing and the concept of identity.

Adriana Cronin-Lukas, a partner in the Big Blog Company, which advises businesses entering this brave new world, says companies first of all need to make a distinction between classical marketing and what they can achieve with a weblog. 'Blogging is part of a marketing effort, but there are fundamental differences,' she says.

'It requires a bit of a mindshift. People need to understand that you can't just say 'Right, let's have one of those blogs'. The hardest part of my job is explaining to people that it's not like having a website. A website is static, whereas a blog is a dynamic thing. A blog is part of a network. It's designed to be linkable. It's designed to bring people in and then send them out so that they can come back again.

'Blogging differs from traditional marketing in that marketing is a way of tricking customers into listening to what you want them to know, whereas blogging is basically a conversation. Blogging is trying to tell people what you think they might be interested in or what you are interested in, hoping that that will engage them. It's not tricking them into paying attention to your message.'

Although fundamentally different from PR, she believes blogging should not be used instead of PR but as a wholly new form of contact, reaching parts that PR never could. 'PR is like sending a proxy to a party,' she says. 'It's more polished, better dressed, well spoken, but it's not you. Doing a blog is going to a party yourself. It's cheaper, in the sense that you don't have to pay somebody else to do it, but it takes much more effort because you've got to find a way to do it yourself.

'It's like having the ability to converse directly with the world around you, meaning the public, your customers, peers, competitors and the business press. The benefits to a company can be much deeper than traditional PR. The honesty and authenticity involved can translate into loyalty and credibility.'

Darren Barefoot, a partner in consultancy InsideBlogging, says that although blogging will never entirely replace PR, its direct, authentic approach is spreading beyond the blog. 'Increasingly, the language of the corporate website and the press release is being replaced by the informal conversational tone of the weblog,' he says. 'We're seeing this first in high-tech companies, but it's spreading into other fields.

'The same things that make a great personal blog make a great corporate blog: a genuine, authentic voice, quality writing and awareness of your community in terms of reading and linking to other sites. And there are lots of advantages to having a blog. The most immediate and tangible ones are increased repeat visitors and search engine ranking. But the more strategic ones are manifold: establishing an industry expert or thought-leader, communicating directly with customers and reporting on day-to-day business activities.'

Risks

But there are risks for any company planning to run a weblog or allowing its employees to do so. The ease and speed with which company secrets, personal abuse, libel or an invasion of privacy can be transmitted through a weblog would give many company managers sleepless nights. But, as Adriana Cronin-Lukas points out, these risks are not unique to blogging.

'None of this is new,' she says. 'If an employee publishes a book or an article the risks are the same. There are already laws, regulations and policies to deal with it. What's changed is that the internet has scaled up the ease with which it can happen. We advise companies to have a clear blogging policy, to say to employees very clearly that this is what we don't want you to do. For example, be careful who you talk about, don't take pictures of people without their permission, don't write about private stuff without permission. It's common sense really.'

The key, though, is authenticity and the cardinal sin is trying to fake it. The sheer size, speed and adaptability of the blogosphere make it a place where such fakes don't go undetected for long.

But, even short of actually faking it, using a blog as a platform for press releases or filling it with marketing-speak will quickly have your company name associated with inauthenticity and falsehood. A blog will do you no good at all unless you're prepared to be open and honest about who you are and what you do. And, for many companies, that might be a little too much information.

Richard Brass is a freelance columnist and feature writer.