Communication Tools
Blog Communications
Blog Communications
What is a Blog?
A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.
Why Blogs are Critical
This morning’s blog post may be the catalyst for tomorrow’s front page news. Information, news, opinions, speculation, misinformation and propaganda move through the blogosphere at the speed of light—and with reporters counting on blogs to provide alternative angles or interesting insights into news making stories, companies cannot afford to ignore the blogging community. A recent study by Columbia University shows that 51% of journalists use blogs regularly, and this number is growing rapidly. Companies in crisis can make the speed of the blogosphere work to their benefit; answering allegations in real-time, correcting misinformation and virally spreading the company’s message.
Blogs Differ from Other Editorial Content in a Number of Ways...
They can be generated anonymously: Unlike editorial content in the mainstream media, the identity of a blog post author may be unknown.
They have a longer shelf life: Information posted in blogs lives on indefinitely, and can be brought up in search results over and over again. Traditional editorial content only lasts as long as the newspaper is on the table or the news show is on the television.
They are updated in real time: Because a blogger is posting his or her opinion on their own site, they can react to news events, comments, etc. immediately—and their readers can immediately see their changes.
They encourage interaction: Most bloggers encourage readers to make comments on their blog posts, to which they respond, creating a lively forum for discussion and exchange of ideas. Editorial and mainstream media only offers one-way communication.
They interlink: The nature of the blogging medium makes it easy for authors to quickly direct readers to media stories, new items and even other blogs that help the blogger make their point.
The Bike Lock and the Blogosphere
Kryptonite spent 30 years building a superior reputation. For a mere 10 days, the company ignored a conversation in an unfamiliar new medium, and doing so cost it dearly—in dollars and reputation.
- Robert Scoble & Shel Israel in Naked Conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers
Over a ten day period, Kryptonite became the poster child for how not to handle online buzz. Aft er noting complaints about specific Kryptonite locks in a cycling enthusiast online forum, tech-focused blog Engadget posted a video showing their success at unlocking the Kryptonite Evolution 2000 U-Lock with a Bic pen. While comments from bike-owning blog readers poured in, Kryptonite ‘responded’ with a statement that could best be described as ‘dismissive’ and neglected to address the problem. And then The New York Times picked up the story.
Kryptonite staffers immediately knew about the forum complaints and the Engadget video. They knew that the Evolution 2000 lock was vulnerable, and behind the scenes, were working out a plan to fix the situation. But they didn’t effectively use the blogosphere and online media to disseminate their side of the story.
Seven days aft er their story broke, they hadn’t even updated their own web site with information about the situation. Ten days after the first forum post, they announced that lock owners could exchange defective locks for free. The cost to Kryptonite? A bruised reputation and about $10 million.
Blog Entries
"The world just got tougher, and so did our locks."
- Kryptonite spokesperson in a statement to blog Engadget
"The world didn't get tougher, it got Bic pens, blogs and your locks got opened."
- high authority blog Engadget in a public blog post
Electronic Arts and Employment Issues
If you’ve got a computer or gaming system in your house, you probably have at least one or two Electronic Arts (EA) video games. But as savvy as they are in game design, they don’t know quite what to do when it comes to working with the blogosphere. They learned a hard lesson in online buzz when a blogger called “EA Spouse” posted about the working
conditions at EA—and she wasn’t complimentary.
What started out as one post on a relatively insignificant blog rapidly picked up—and the mainstream media asked EA for comment on the online allegations, to which EA responded with the standard ‘we can’t discuss employee issues’ line. The EA Spouse blog is, to this day, highly ranked in Google; EA recently settled a $15 million dollar overtime suit brought against it by employees.
Blog Entries
Mr. Brown did say that the company was interested in its employees’ opinions, as illustrated by its employee survey, conducted every two years.
- NYTimes’ Randall Stross describing Electronic Arts Spokesman Jeff Brown
If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him... The main thing I want to know is, Larry: you do realize what you’re doing to your people, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives, and families, right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that?
- blogger EA Spouse in a blog post that tells “The Human Story of Electronic Arts”
Electronic Arts Settles Overtime Lawsuit
- CNET.com news headline, 4/25/05
August 2006 State of the Blogosphere
(Sources: Technorati & David Sifry)
- The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
- Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about every 6.5 months.
- About 175,000 new weblogs are created each day, which means that on average there are more than 2 blogs created each second of the day.
- Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
- This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
How Journalists and the Public Use Blogs
Columbia University Survey of the Media
According to the Annual Columbia University Survey of the Media, of the 1,202 international journalists surveyed, 51% are using blogs regularly.
- Twenty-eight percent of journalists rely on blogs for their daily reporting.
- Of the journalists who use blogs, 70% use blogs for work-related tasks.
- Journalists typically use blogs in one of four ways:
- Finding story ideas (53%)
- Researching and referencing facts (43%)
- Finding sources (36%)
- Uncover breaking news or scandals
- Sixty-eight percent of respondents believe that blogs will become a more popular tool for corporations seeking to inform consumers.
Nick Wingfield, WSJ tech reporter, on how reporters use blogs
- As tickler files: "Blogs break big news on occasions…In the days before blogs, trade pubs and newsletters would pick up on these types of stories - and the mainstream media would pick up the trades as tip sheets…the point is that these [blogs] can help us research story ideas."
- As sounding boards: Wingfield uses "blogs to see and hear how people in this fairly technical area think about a [certain product or announcement]… blogs will debate the merits and demerits of deals between companies, for example. They’re not research tools exactly, but they give you a sense of what people think." Additionally, Wingfield revisits blogs after stories run to "see what their reactions were to it."
- As digests of the day’s news: Blogs " …do good jobs of surfacing other stories in the mainstream media that I may not have caught."
- As useful websites: "The term blogs is meaningless in a way [because no matter their category] once they've become a useful tool, they're really just a bunch of websites with useful information."
Lexis Nexis on how the American public views blogs
It appears that middle America is embracing blogs and other ‘citizen journalism’.
- In an October 2006 survey by Lexis-Nexis, emerging news sources (defined in the survey as “citizen journalists, pundits and organizations who create alternative or Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts, often with a personal or particular point of view”) ranked well below ‘traditional’ media as a source for information on ‘major events’ but are expected to gain in importance.
- In the future, more than half (52%) of the consumers surveyed anticipate they will continue to mostly trust and rely on traditional news sources, However, more than a third (35%) expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and more than one in ten (13%) anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media.
- The survey found that blogs, user groups and chat rooms were the second most trusted source of information about entertainment news, following traditional lifestyle media.
Key Questions to Ask
- Where are your messages coming from?
- What are they saying?
- What’s the issue…how has the issue changed?
- Who’s telling the story your audience needs to hear?