Corporate blogging in general has not been that strong in the UK market. I believe that that there is still a feeling that blogs are for Americans. It is not exactly quintessentially English to tell the world about what you are thinking.

Charles Dunstone is the CEO of The Carphone Warehouse and started a blog after they acquired a broadband operator and launched the TalkTalk free broadband service. He was considered a pioneer in the marketplace at the time.

TalkTalk ran into problems with provisioning and customer service a few months ago, and Dunstone stopped blogging for over 2 months. He has received a lot of negative feedback about this and posted again on the 13th November apologising for the long absence.

Critics of blogs will be arguing that this is what happens if you are too transparent, and that blogs open you up to scrutiny that you might otherwise avoid. I believe that the error was in not continuing to blog through the crisis. If he had been able to continue the dialogue and explain to customers what they were doing to resolve the issues in a personal, human way, it may have helped with their public relations nightmare.

Dell used their blog extensively through the battery recall and by encouraging comments, they were able to follow up directly with the customer and try to find a way to resolve their concerns. Even sharing this information with the world shows that Dell was trying their best to deal with a difficult situation. Here is an example comment and response:

Michael Mace said:
I know you didn’t create the battery problem, but your handling of it worries me. Here’s my experience so far:

–I went to the battery recall site several weeks ago, entered my battery’s information very carefully, and the system told me I did not need a replacement.

–Tonight after receiving your additional notice, I entered the information again and now it says I do need a recall. I know you say you haven’t changed the batteries recalled, but I think you have.

If you change the criteria for the recall, you should say so very clearly. Others who had checked with the site previously may not bother to re-check.

I tried to reply about this to your e-mail, but the reply bounced. Apparently you sent the message from an address that doesn’t accept replies — even though you didn’t say so in the e-mail message, and you did say in the message that people should contact you if they have any questions.

This is a level of sloppiness I don’t expect from Dell.

So I hunted down this weblog — it’s the only electronic forum I could find for giving you feedback (I don’t want to invest the time in calling you).

That’s my two cents.
October 18, 2006 10:56 PM

Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager said:
Michael: Thanks for the comments. My apologies for not following up. I can tell you that we did not change the criteria for the recall. We simply received updated information from Sony in terms of the number of batteries shipped.

In terms of your specific battery, do you still need to get a replacement battery lined up?
October 18, 2006 10:56 PM

In this example, Lionel from Dell was able to clear up a misunderstanding immediately that they had changed the criteria for the recall, when in fact they had not. It has to be better to know what your customers are thinking rather than trying to avoid the issue. Nearly every business deals with major product recalls or similar public relations issues from time to time and I believe that it is how the company handles the situation, which will have the most impact on the future perceptions of the brand. A blog is an excellent tool for maintaining direct contact with affected customers and giving them comfort that they are doing everything possible.

40 of the Fortune 500 corporations in the US are now blogging. This is up from 24 just six months ago so is definitely on the rise. Whilst tech companies dominate, there are a guys like Boeing and General Motors doing it.

Amazon.com Inc.
Avaya Inc.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Dell, Inc
Electronic Data Systems
Ford Motor Company
General Motors Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
International Business Machines
Microsoft Corporation
Motorola Inc
Oracle Corporation
Sprint
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Texas Instruments
The Boeing Company
Time Warner Inc.
Viacom International Inc

The updated list and links are available as a Wiki so if you find any more, just add them to the list.

So blogging is on the rise and should be part of the marketing and communications strategy, but what are the key issues to consider:

Ownership
However, which department should own it? Is it the team that deals with the website, public relations, or the marketing team? The reality is probably all three. When a CEO commits to a blog, this sends a clear message to their business that it is important and will help accelerate wider adoption of blogs.

Policy
A clear blog policy is also a must to ensure that employees understand what is appropriate and what is not. You can’t try to control content, but a business blog should be just that, you shouldn’t see their personal holiday photos up there. This policy can also detail how to deal with comments, a critical but potentially time consuming task.

Frequency
There is endless debate on what is an acceptable number of posts per month. I believe quality is better than quantity. Most readers will access the content via RSS, so it is not as if they are checking back every day. They’ll be aware when you post. A two month gap between posts clearly isn’t appropriate though.

Platform
I personally don’t believe the choice of blogging tools and software really matters, however, it is essential that they be connected to the various social networks and include support for:

RSS
Tags
Trackbacks
Ping search engines and RSS aggregators

Don’t let it be a major IT project, setting up a blog should take hours with the wide availability of excellent software and services.

I hope that more UK CEO’s and companies, take the plunge soon.

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