A revolution in corporate communications is coming your way soon

Chris Anderson of The Long Tail calls it "radical transparency" in a nice write up on his blog. I've been calling it a "revolution" or a "radical transformation" in corporate communications. (Yes I write about this in The Corporate Blogging Book.)

The top-down, command-and-control approach to communicating a company's news and daily doings is giving way to something messier and more human. Namely, blogged bits and pieces, either from employees or from the CEO or other top execs, that tell a company's story much more effectively than any press release or official pronouncement ever could.

Chris has some great examples:

- Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks), who blogs his specific thoughts about Google's acquisition of YouTube and copyright issues

- Jason Knight, the CEO of Wesabe, is taking calls four hours a day from anyone who wants to call in and speak with him about Wesabe's online financial management platform (this sounds cool but I'm a bit confused; maybe I'll call him)

Update: Jason called *me* today out of the blue. He picked up this post through his RSS radar and decided to call and tell me more about his new company (which is getting fabulous mentions both in the blogosphere and MSM). Amazing, huh?!

A few examples I like to offer:

- Jonathan Schwartz blogging that he's "been waiting all afternoon" to tell us "I had lunch with Tony Blair today..."

- GM exec Brian Akre blogging about The New York Times' ban on 'rubbish' - i.e. the letter to the editor he could *not* get published in the Times in rebuttal to Tom Friedman's critical column (subscription required) about GM's gas credit. (Dozens of comments from readers support GM and are critical of The Times.)

[via Melcrum's new blog - soon to be public]

So what will it take for the Fortune 500 to adopt blogging?

David Kline, co-author of one of the handful of books published thus far on blogging (Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture) just emailed to say he's working on an article about what's holding the F500 back from blogging and what it will take for blogging to go mainstream. He asked for my thoughts and I responded:

Fear & blogging on the blogosphere Long Tail
(with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson)

Fear is the single most important thing holding corporate America back from embracing blogging. Fear of being open, fear of a two-way conversation, fear of controlling the message, fear of the time commitment. Just makes sense. If you put blogging in the basket of corporate communications it runs absolutely antithetical to so-called current best practices.

So what will make this change? Again, fear. Fear of not embracing the new media technologies which so many consumers are now adopting, whether it's a video iPod or a blog. Fear of not being where your customers are. Which, increasingly, is online.

Well, that's my thought for the day. Now back to cleaning up the mess on my desk...

I'm writing a book about Corporate Blogging for Penguin

It's official! I've just closed a deal with Penguin Portfolio to write a book about corporate blogging. Pub date is 2006. Penguin is the publisher of Seth Godin's books, including Purple Cow and his new All Marketers Are Liars. As well as some other nifty business books. Of course, there will be a "book blog" to accompany the creation (and, er, promotion) of the book. I can't promise that I'll post every chapter as I write it, as Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are doing over at The Red Couch. But I'll be asking for input and hope you'll speak your mind. Stay tuned...

Why corporate blogging works, according to Hugh Macleod's Gaping Void

Hugh nails it... and with a cool cartoon to boot. (© Hugh Macleod). He divides your marketing into two parts, using an inner and outer circle.

1. The "internal conversation" your company is having with itself (circle A).

2. The "external conversation" your company should be having with, er, customers (circle B).

The membrane between these two areas should be porous enough that they are "aligned." I.e. you're listening to your customers and talking back to them about stuff they care about. In other words, you (your company) and your customers are talking about the same thing.

And... corporate blogs can enable this conversation. Tony Dowler makes a good point, however. Blogs are not the only conversations you should be having with customers. You can still use "press releases, white papers, training courses and presentations."

Did you know you can order Hugh's sketches for the front of your business card? I'm a huge fan of his blog cards as he calls them.

Update on IABC blogging panel

I'm delighted to report that Gary Grates, VP Corporate Communications, North America for General Motors has accepted my invite to be the third panelist on IABC's corporate blogging panel on June 27, 2005. (Here is the description of the session, part of IABC's international annual conference in Washington DC.) Gary, who is known as a "thought leader" on change management and effective employee-management relations, is a regular contributor to GM's Fastlane blog. The other two panelists are Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Edition and Kevin Holland, VP Communications of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the force behind ACCABuzz.

Moderating IABC blog panel on June 27, 2005

Cool news. I've been asked to moderate a panel on corporate blogging for IABC's annual conference in Washington D.C. on June 27, 2005. I've invited Paul Rosenfeld, GM of Intuit's QuickBooks Online Edition and the force behind QuickBooks Online blog, along with Kevin Holland, VP Communications of Air Conditioning Contractors of America and creator of the ACCABuzz blog to join me. To round out the panel I've invited one of the top-dog bloggers for GM's Fastlane blog (not Bob Lutz but someone who should be even better because of his inside perspective). Waiting to hear back.

Here's what IABC chairman Warren Bickford says  about our event in his new blog. He mentions it in the same breath as the announcement that Mark Hurd,  HP's new CEO, will be the plenary speaker. Hey, business blogging is going big time! More TK...

Q & A on Corporate Blogging

Thanks to the those who submitted questions a while back about corporate blogging. And sorry for the delay in publishing answers. Here's a Q & A on corporate blogging:

Leanne of 30 Minute Coach writes:

Q: "Which is more effective? Adding a blog to your current business Web site or converting the entire site to a blog format?"

A: Great question. Blogs are next-generation Web sites. They're a simple and elegant content management tool which makes them an excellent choice for non techies (like me) who want a constantly-updated Web site.

That said, you'll need to find a blog-savvy Web designer who can put together a site for you based on MovableType. (I'm working on that myself. I cringe whenever I look at my main WordBiz site; it's hopelessly outdated.) Here are three sites built on MT: Blog Business Summit, SixApart (company that owns MT and TypePad) and MarketingVox.com. Key point: a site built on blog software does not need to LOOK LIKE a blog.

Oh, and Leanne, for now... including a prominent link to your blog in your site navigation is perfectly acceptable.

Q: John Cowburn writes:

"Do the search engines care whether my blog has its own domain name vs. being hosted on a service like TypePad?"

A: I'm not a search engine specialist so I don't have the definitive answer. But you should know about domain mapping. Infomaven Lois Ambash calls it a "technical trick" and explains it this way: "Your blog can be hosted by a service like TypePad but be 'pointed' toward a domain you own even though it actually resides on TypePad's servers."  I use "forwarding" so that when you type in BlogWriteForCEOs.com it resolves to blogwrite.blogs.com . I'm told this is not as good for search engine results as domain mapping.

Accessibility & transparency: should Carly have blogged?

Yesterday's abrupt news that Carly Fiorina was ousted as CEO of H-P got me to thinking... should Carly have had a blog?  BTW, the link on Carly's name goes to the bio page on H-P's site where the copy has already been changed to "Former Chairman and CEO." Don't write off the blogging idea as ridiculous. Consider...

An Internal Blog
If Carly had had an internal blog (i.e. behind H-P's firewall and not for public viewing), she might have been able to warm up her apparently chilly and/or distant relationship with many H-P employees. Maybe she could have reestablished some of the collegiality that defined H-P's culture not so long ago. She might have titled her internal blog "Dateline Carly..." and doled out choice anecdotes about her constant travelling. Maybe she could have blogged about how wonderful it was to fly on the corporate jet and how much she appreciated it. I bet they had great snacks on the plane. Did she have a real bed? She might have shown a photo of it. People *love* this kind of detail, especially when it's divulged by a celebrity... and it's pretty harmless info.

An External Blog
Even more daring... suppose Carly had blogged publicly, like Jonathan Schwartz of Sun. Would her every word have been parsed by Wall Street's analysts, the media and her competitors... Making it virtually impossible for her to write authentically? Possibly. But imagine if she could have been just a wee bit  more transparent about H-P's struggles to turn a profit on its personal computers division (the unwieldy result of the Compaq merger). Or perhaps she could have engaged in a bit of mud slinging with HP's  biggest rivals, Dell and IBM. Sun's Schwartz  has been openly confrontational with IBM in recent posts. And yeah...it makes for interesting reading.

Ah well... we won't know if Carly would have been a good blogger. Unless she has the nerve and savvy to start a blog now. Kind of a "What's Next" with reflections on life, what she's reading... etc. Go for it Carly! TypePad awaits you.

Useful Links  (yup, from the mainstream media...)

2/10/05 Wall Street Journal: H-P's Board Ousts Fiorina as CEO (requires registration)

2/10/05 New York Times: Fiorina's Confrontational Tenure at Hewlett Comes to a Close

2/10/05 Washington Post: Hewlett-Packard Forces Celebrity CEO to Quit

2/07/05 Fortune Mag cover story: Why Carly's Big Bet is Failing

 

Are we at The Tipping Point for Corporate Blogging?

Yes. According to Hugh MacLeod of the Hughtrain and GapingVoid. Hugh writes:

"So the blogosphere waits for the corporate-mainstream Tipping Point to arrive, the point where blogging stops being the supposed realm of freaks, weirdos, unemployed marketing consultants, unpublished novelists, political junkies and underworked cube dwellers, and starts being HUGE! An essential pillar of any corporate strategy and execution etc etc.

The GM blog sent a signal that we might, might, might have reached the corporate tipping point (we reached the individual tipping point a while ago, methinks)."

Read his whole post here. Oh, and if you haven't ordered Hugh's cool cartoon business cards from StreetCards.com, get on over there! I just ordered a second batch.

 

4 disadvantages of blogging... according to Gerry McGovern

Web content expert Gerry McGovern has published a useful and authoritative e-newsletter every week (he's never missed a deadline, he told me) since 1996. It's a text-only email but almost always has a gem or two related to content management.  New Thinking archives here. I just ran across an article he published in August, 2004 on Blogs and blogging: advantages and disadvantages. He makes some excellent points about blogs and writing...