Comments on: Can A Big Company Really Blog?

By: 大公司可以博客吗？ : 先驱博客 - The Blog Herald China

大公司可以博客吗？ : 先驱博客 - The Blog Herald China — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:19:10 +0000

By: Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist

Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:24:29 +0000

I think there is a wholesale misunderstanding of what blogging is. For centuries big companies have been effectively blogging. All staff go home and talk to their friends and family about their work. Some are positive about the big company, some are negative. Company reputations are largely built or destroyed on this “word of mouth”. Blogging is exactly the same; it gives employees of big companies the chance to say what they feel about the company they work for. That could, in just the same way, be positive or negative. The only difference between blogs and word of mouth is that blogs are more public. As a result big companies can see what is being said about them, whereas beforehand they didn’t know what people were saying in bars, at dinner parties and so on. What this means is that big companies should be encouraging every employee to blog about the company. The challenge for big business is not handling the blogs; instead it is to make the workplace so positive, that the blogs will inevitably be positive. The big companies that lots of people want to work for have lots of positive word of mouth. Big companies who want to “manage” blogging are almost certainly places where people dislike working. Indeed, the employees will say so in bars, homes, etc. In other words, blogs are just “word of mouth” from a psychological perspective. That’s how we as human beings perceive them. So, if companies want to manage blogs, do they also want to manage what we say at home? Or is that a step too far? Big companies can blog; indeed to survive they MUST blog.

By: John Wesley

John Wesley — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:54:03 +0000

I’m inclined to think no. The key point is blogging being tied to one individual. One person cannot speak frankly when he has to constantly account for the interests of a large company.

By: IR Web Report Blog » In Davos, CEOs encouraged to blog

IR Web Report Blog » In Davos, CEOs encouraged to blog — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:13:03 +0000

[...] Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 in a column for the Blog Herald thinks that’s a bad idea. He asks, “Can a big company really blog?” “I’m not suggesting that big public companies can’t benefit from more transparency, better customer relationship management, and less corporate brand speak. I just don’t see the kind of raw communication that made the blogosphere what it is (for better and worse) translating directly to big corporate communications. Big companies can take inspiration from the best of blogging and try to evolve in that direction, but in a post-Enron, post-Worldcom world, I’m don’t want CEOs of companies I’m invested in embracing “fast and loose.” [...]