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Phil's Blogservations
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Posted by philgomes 7:15 PM
Corporate Blogging, Comments, Etc.Corporate Blogs, Comments, Etc.
First off, bravo to Julie Farris of Scalix for engaging in the blog-borne conversation in a way that was honest and compatible with how the blogosphere works. There's an awful lot to react to here, so bear with me. Before I begin... I've often found it kind of funny that I'm often seen as one of those maverick PR folks who march headlong into the battlefield of corporate communications with "Blogs" emblazoned on my shield. This obviously comes from the fact that I've been writing and speaking about this topic for some time, including an all-too-long period wherein acknowledging blogs' very existence and their incalculable potential for influence got you laughed out of your agency's conference room. (This is part-and-parcel a result of the pervasive "That's-nice-but-how-does-it-
get-me-into-tomorrow's-Wall-Street-Journal?" myopia.)The truth of the matter is that — within the group of communications professionals that have strong ideas and opinions about how blogs, blogging, and corporate communications intersect — I'm probably one of the more centrist of the lot. Stripping away the term's political connotations, you could even say that my views are "conservative" in this regard. So... The ZD blog post by David Berlind, rightly praising Ms. Farris' approach, pulls out this common observation: Public relations personnel cringe at the idea of executives diving into the blogosphere and mixing it up with the press and end users. Maybe that's because of how the blogosphere prevents them from interceding when an executive is about to say something that shouldn't be said. Personally, I think it makes both the executives and the company seem more open and approachable.I've observed throughout my career that new technologies and forms of communication are nearly always seen as a threat or nuisance by PR professionals. (More under "Learning By Listening" in chapter four of Dan Gillmor's We The Media, describing an early incident in my career.) This is often followed by these mad scrambles to be the first agency seen as the marketing masters of that same technology. This often yields some ill-considered and embarrassing results. For my part, I believe that blogosphere participation should be viewed as an opportunity for corporate communications professionals. That said, I also believe that all opportunities, off- and online, need to be carefully managed. Public relations and investor relations folks have responsibility for ensuring that a company's message is not only compelling, but consistent. Openness and approachability are, of course, key to any organization's relationship with the press and analyst communities, as well as the groups that they influence in turn. If communications policies aren't in place and a company's executives and employees just kind of post willy-nilly — regardless of whether they think they're doing a good thing for the company — consistency is lost and the PR or IR person is not doing the job. (Can you imagine using "But we were just trying to be open and approachable" as your excuse to the SEC when your company's blog postings, comments, and regulatory filings just don't seem to jibe? I hate to harsh your mellow, but that's what could be at stake.) All too often, I observe that a number of the blog-aware folks in the profession get so caught up in trying to be more blog-savvy than the next guy that they forget that they have a primary obligation to those who sign their checks. This means that, yes, communications need to be managed, a term that runs pretty contrary to the whole blogging ethic. This brings us to a debate that I frequently have with many PR folks: whether a corporate blog should even have the comments feature turned on. Mr. Berlind writes: Sun president and COO Jonathan Schwartz for example has a blog, but he doesn't take comments.And, really, why should he? The blogerati must love to ding blogs that don't have comments activated — especially the rare corporate ones that are, frankly, making a big enough leap as it is right now. Some PR folks who want to ingratiate themselves with this rarified group uncritically agree with this position, almost out of a need to say "look-I'm-just-as-hip-and-with-it-as-you." In doing so, such PR people forget a large part of what they're being paid to do — manage communications. While I believe this question of allowing comments should be addressed on a case-by-case basis with a clear analysis of risks-versus-rewards, I generally discourage it for the following reasons:
- Honestly... Do you or your organization have the time or resources to police against increasingly sophisticated "comment spam" operations? Throughout my own career, for example, most of my clients have been engineering-focused enterprises rather than marketing-focused. A dollar of funding or revenue is more likely to be invested in a mass spectrometer than in marketing, making the latter a resource to be preciously conserved.
- Creating the impression of openness and approachability can be accomplished through other means as well. Is allowing comments on your corporate blog the best — or even a good — way to do so, given the aforementioned risk and resource concerns?
- Would you ever hand your competitors a platform to espouse their views? That's what turning those comments on, in essence, provides. Would you hand them the mic at your press conference, or would you tell them to schedule their own? This leads me to the fact that...
- ...it's really easy to make your own blog. If you don't like how a competitor is shaping the conversation on its blog, your company should make its own.
The notion of what I've come to call "comment entitlement" kind of reminds me of the arguments surrounding the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," a decades-old FCC idea that sought to enforce equal coverage of all significant views about an issue in any given broadcast. (This is above-and-beyond the very necessary "equal time" and "personal attack" rules.) Among the Doctrine's opponents, journalists rightly fought it as a First Amendment issue, saying that it's not the government's job to enforce "fairness." The Fairness Doctrine fell into disuse around 1985, though contemporary legislators will occassionally try to revive it. One of the true beauties of the First Amendment is that it's so thorough that it even defends peoples' right to completely miss the point. The Doctrine's contemporary supporters forget that the environment that created it changed dramatically over time. The Fairness Doctrine made sense when broadcasting was young and there were scant few stations occupying scarce spectrum. Post-1980s (and especially now) scarcity is no longer an issue thanks to more intelligent frequency allocation (and the technologies that enable it), cable, satellite TV, the Internet, and so on. These days, it's hard to imagine someone like Bill O'Reilly credibly demanding time on Al Franken's show, or vice-versa, in the interests of "equal time." Similarly, the fact that Jonathan Schwartz doesn't allow comments on his blog is immaterial. Blogging is free and is becoming increasingly democratized. If someone wants an online voice and possesses a relatively medium-to-low degree of technical know-now, that person's opinion can be heard or, at the very least, published. Why should Schwartz hand you a mic when you've got several makes and models of mics in front of you, already plugged in? Trackbacks, it could be argued, provide a compromise that most people can live with. I do mostly agree with this statement, which precedes the comment about Schwartz: Just that sort of open invitation says something about a person's belief in what they are saying and willingess to engage--unfortunately, it's a rarity in our business.Absolutely right. An honest blog comment, an executive blog (especially a comment-enabled one), is an incredibly gutsy move — just like the earlier examples of handing over the mic to a competitor at the press conference. Then again, I don't think that Schwartz necessarily demonstrates a lacking in his convictions by not allowing comments. I'm sure that Mr. Berlind didn't mean to imply that, but that's certainly how it came out. (Waitaminnit... This just hit me... Is it actually possible to pick two easier targets within a tech blog: PR people and Sun Microsystems?) Where I believe activating comments makes the most sense is in a forum where the playing field is relatively level (like a tech publisher's blog) and where the relative merits of the comments are rated or judged by a community-governed system (like Slashdot and SLASH-based blogs). As to the former case...That's a whole 'nother kettle o' fish, because a publisher has other motivations for allowing comments besides being good blogging citizens. After all, the degree to which a community is built via these blog comments directly affects pageviews and, by extension, advertising revenue. As a devout capitalist, I'm certainly not faulting them for this, but we have to be completely clear as to any company's motivation for making its website user-writeable, which is what allowing comments effectively does. In reading this over, I guess that the ZD post (and my reaction) has shifted topics: from vendors-commenting-on-blogs to vendors-allowing-comments-on-their-own. Again, in either case, PR firms and corporate communications departments need to look at both the resource, risk, and reward factors and then create policies that reflect those realities. In the presumed absence of such a policy, I wouldn't be surprised if Ms. Farris or the Scalix PR department sent out a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do email to all employees. Managing communications... THAT'S THE @#$%& JOB, PEOPLE! So, in closing, I don't allow comments on this blog. My own case-by-case analysis tells me its a bad idea and I have no idea how Scoble keeps up with reading his comments and over a thousand RSS feeds. However, I encourage you to write your own reactions or start your own blog. Make me change my mind! Update: Michael Gartenberg, separately, says that folks ask Jupiter about turning on the comments in analysts' blogs.
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This is the blog of Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL.
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