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Perceived advantages of corporate blogging 89 evidence, but rather by the advice of consultants like Weil. 7 However, it is clear that blogging and the move towards social software in general are broader phenomena that institutions need to pay attention to, lest they lose touch with their constituents. Demographic factors, increasing the risk of “missing out” on target markets and constituencies by not blogging also play a role: Bloggers are overwhelmingly young adults who hail from urban and suburban areas. They are evenly divided between men and women. Bloggers are less likely than internet users to be white. (Lenhart and Fox, 2006, p. 2) The characterization of private bloggers and blog readers as well-educated, young and affluent makes them both potential customers and potential employees to whose communicative habits companies need to adjust. In that sense, claims such as those made by Weil point to a real issue: failing to adjust to broader changes in the communicative landscape may have its price. What is new is the pressure on institutional communication to follow the paradigm of interpersonal communication. “Talking down”, as institutions have traditionally done, has a negative connotation in a world where individuals are empowered in terms of communication and access to information as never before. A comprehensive strategic approach to planned corporate blogging is outlined by Zerfaß (2005). As Weil, Zerfaß emphasizes that a clear strategic objective is required for a company blog. Thus, while private ego blogs can be characterized by the lack of a fixed external purpose, 8 corporate blogs are not viable without explicit and stable communicative goals. Blogging cuts across the organized and structured processes of internal communication, market communication, network communication and public relations forming the framework inside which corporate communication takes place. This makes blogging difficult to plan and control, which is in turn a prerequisite of concerted organizational action. It must be clear who is communicating, who is addressed and how the communication is conducted, but the stability of these factors is undermined in blogging, since anyone can blog, anyone can potentially be the reader of a blog and the content and style of corporate blogs is largely in the hands of individual employees who may in no way be prepared to achieve strategic objectives through blogging. The degree of organizational purposefulness intrinsically required for corporate blogs is therefore extremely hard to combine with the prototypical characteristics of private ego blogs, therefore making a reconceptualization of corporate blogs along the lines of topic blogging and publishing necessary. Under such a topical (i.e. reader-focused) banner it is possible to subsume a range of activities and goals ranging from knowledge management to product promotion to crisis deescalation. Figure 3.4 shows a typology developed by Zerfaß (2006) describing areas of use for corporate blogs specifically under the aspect of purpose. Before a 7 As Zerfaß points out in regards to the “revolutionary” potential of corporate blogs propagated by media consultants: “Neue technische Möglichkeiten verändern nur bedingt die Regeln und Ressourcen, die das Zusammenleben und damit auch die Verständigungsprozesse in unserer Gesellschaft prägen.” (2005, p. 1) 8 Note that the term is used here without claiming that self-focused ego blogging does not fulfill a vital function for those who practice it. Instead, I use it to point to a) a lack of explicit goals that the blogger is aware of, b) shifting and variable goals in regards to different audiences and c) goals which are subjective and focused on the blogger himself, such as knowledge management and venting.
90 The corporate blog as an emerging genre Figure 3.4: Functions of corporate blogs following Zerfaß (2005) blog can be launched, five steps should be taken by practitioners, according to Zerfaß: • practitioners should make themselves familiar with blogs and feeds to gain an understanding of the format • a form of blog monitoring should be implemented to control the blog and measure its success • opinion leaders and critics should be identified • initial experiences should be gathered by launching a non-public blog on the company intranet • if prior experiences are positive, a public-facing blog on the Internet can be launched Such a measured and careful approach reflects organizational considerations for coherence and sustainability. Since they have much more to lose by unsuccessful ventures into the blogosphere than individuals, corporations must plan step by step how they want to implement blogs. Similar suggestions for the successful implementation of planned corporate blogging into a company’s corporate communications strategy are given by countless marketing and public relations experts, new media consultants and researchers with backgrounds in communication studies and economics. However, the two core recommendations offered by Zerfaß – implement a form of blog monitoring and identify (and address) opinion leaders and critics – are more problematic than they initially appear. Despite attempts to measure the impact of blogs (Li, 2006, 2007) questions remain regarding how well any metric, list of stakeholders or feedback sample captures the actual response. Blog monitoring, in the sense of both exercising editorial control over a blog (e.g. by moderating comments, editing and updating posts) and assessing its readership with the use of analytical tools is possible and widely practiced in corporate contexts. Tools such as Feedburner enable blog owners to gain a precise picture of how many people read what entries in their blog, how they found the blog (search engine vs. direct referral or link from anther site) and other
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Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 “Wait,
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Issues of definition 13 2005, p. 14
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Methods, data and approach 15 proli
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Preliminary theoretical considerati
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Structure of this thesis 21 1.6 Str
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24 Formal, technical and pragmatic
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Page 133 and 134: 132 Bibliography Francesca Bargiela
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Digital technology is increasingly
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