What happens if your blogger outreach programme goes wrong and you or your prroduct/service is trashed? Here is what one person did...

Interesting article in AdAge about how women use blogs...

Some highlight statistics:

• 35% of all women in US aged 18 - 75 that go online participate in blogs weekly (read, write or comment)

If a 'heavy' user of the internet this increases to 53%.

Why do they participate in the blogosphere?

• 46% for fun
• 41% to get info
• 40% to socialise with friends and family
• 34% to keep updated on specific topics
• 28% to connect with others

That is a lot of online conversations. What is being said about your products and service? How well is your online brand reputation holding up? Unsure? Certainlt worth checking out!

According to Scientific American researchers are to explore the health benefits of blogging. It has long been known that self expression is a useful therapy in helping people communicate and deal with stress and other other emotional issues. Scientists want to explore other benefits of blogging. 

To quote '...expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not....'

Corporates should take note: What a double win! Blogging helps CRM and employee health! 5-a-day fruit in the company cafe and a blog post a day to a healthy, motivated and efficient work force.

Next step: A Government campaign.

Johnson and Johnson have just completed a programme where they got a group of bloggers together for a multi day event. It sounds like they avoided the mistake many companies make and ensured that this was a ‘soft branding exercise’ focussing on topics of discussion rather than promotion of products.

(Thanks to WOMMA for the link)

Number 10 used the recent Progressive Government Summit 2008 to use live blogging. 

Great case study from Todd Defren over at Shift Communications in the USA showing how really targeting the message pays off. Many PR companies make the mistake of 'broadcasting' just like you would with a press release. Throw if far and wide and something will stick...

As Todd explains being selective and building a relationship with key influencial bloggers is key. The challenge is there is no media list to simply look up and build a mass e-mailing list. It takes desk based research to find out bloggers who have good 'circles of influence'. As Todd shows that sort of research pays back dividends.

In the just published 2008 PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey (Source: WOMMA blog) 73% of journalists said they use bloggers as a source of information as part of their research.

What does this mean for companies?

They need to be either self blogging or engaging in conversations with bloggers or they are going to be missing two important elements in the communication mix - bloggers (about 10% of total population online) and the media themselves.

McDonalds is encouraging employees to use blogs to improve internal communication (Source: MarketingVox). This joins McDonalds public blog on Corporate Social Responsibility.

In May 2005 Business Week published an article 'Blogs will change your business'.

It has just updated it to take account of the last two years developments in the blogospehere. The new updated article is called 'Social Media will change your business'.  It is worth reading.

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded for podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

Great article on Investor.com dealing with the impact on reputation of negative stories online. (Thanks to David Wilson for the link to the story.)

It details what happened to a US microwave popcorn manufacturer, Pop Weaver, and the reaction of their PR agency to address the issue. It also includes details of other companies – many of them who have not handled it as well as Pop Weaver. The damage to those who fail to act can be huge.

All saw their reputation tarnished as well as negative impact on their share price and revenue. In some cases this amounted to tens and millions of $.

A heavy price to pay due to poor online brand management.

So what can an in-house or agency PR team do to minimise such risks?

Monitor online blogs for posts and comments

I am constantly amazed at the number of companies that do not systematically monitor what is being said about them and by whom online. One way of looking at it is to consider it a free customer satisfaction mechanism. You would pay a lot of money to find out what customers and prospects think about your company, its products and services. Or you could monitor blogs, comments, forums and fan-sites to see what the state is.  

React fast to any negative comments – ‘firestorms’ can start quickly

The blogosphere is a 24/365 environment. As blogs are subscribed to, cross-linked and ‘trackbacked’ negative comments can quickly gain momentum. Newspapers and broadcasters may have tight deadlines but they are not ‘always on’ like the internet. Traditionally a company would have had some time to prepare its story to meet a crisis or deal with an issue. The reality is that most customer service issues are still handled via legacy support systems where each customer could be treated as an individual. With the internet dissatisfied people can ‘swarm’ around an issue and gain momentum and visibility very quickly. A negative post needs an immediate response via comments on that blog and through other bloggers and forums. Without this the counter-balancing response will not be seen by people. You want a negative blog to carry your side of the story. An explanation. The old adage a ‘Stitch in time is better than nine’ holds very true here.

Blogs have a long shelf life – don’t hide in the vain hope they go away

Often in crisis management it feels like a strategy of avoiding comment and hoping it would go away is being employed. After all it is often said ‘Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ (now that ages me!) In the online world this is just not true. Posts can last almost ‘forever’. With more and more views, links and trackbacks they can climb the search engine listings staying live for many months. This is why it is critical that immediate action is taken to join in the online conversation. Some companies have found it takes many months to turn the tide of negative feelings. The sooner you start the better.

Traditional media is watching and waiting

Research has shown that increasingly journalists are using blogs. Recently one report said almost 1/5^th had their own blogs. Almost 80% said they read blogs to get a source for a story and 76% said they regularly read them to get an idea of the tone and buzz on subject matter. Blog firestorms get picked up by traditional media and reported on. This in effect adds fuel to the fire as even more people are then aware of the negative blogs and many will go to read them so increasing the search engine rankings and overall negative pressure.

Time and an integrated approach to online and offline media and brand management is called for.

Be open and honest – don’t try and ‘spoof’ the blogosphere

A number of companies have tried to ‘spoof’ positive PR campaigns. The same with comments on a negative posting. Malcolm Gladwell postulated in his book, Blink, people can be very perceptive. To ‘spin’ a story or press release means you risk the blogosphere finding out thant something does not ‘add up’. There is a phenomenon called the ‘wisdom of the crowds’. The old adage ‘Two heads are better than one’ springs to mind. With so many people likely following the ‘firestorm’ you have a large number of people watching what is happening and able to spot when something is just not right.

If you are caught out trying to blind-side the blogosphere they will turn on you. Your reputation will then be damaged even worse.

Always be honest. Be open. Do not hide behind ‘ghosted’ positive articles, blogs or comments as a counter to negative perceptions.  

An interesting post by Debbie Weil. She quotes research by communications firm Bordeur into the use of blogs by journalists.

Here are some highlight findings of how journalists use blogs:

• 78.3% use them for story ideas/news angles
• 76% use them to get an insight into topics
• 46.9% use them for speed of breaking news
• 57.1% read blogs 2 -3 times per week
• 27.7% have their own blog
• 16.3% have their own social networking page
• 71% have a list of blogs they read regularly
• 52% use Google as the search engine when identifying blogs

Reasons they use blogs:

• 74.1% speed
• 68.6% availability of information on subject matter 
• 61.8% establish tone of 'conversation'

They have less trust in blogs as having a strong editorial policy or being accurate but rather see them as a source of stories and information to follow-up.

A great article in Ad Age on what US based global brands are doing with social media in 2008.

What does it say? Consumer generated content, engagement and conversations through forums, social networks and blogs are all included in the communications mix.

What is funding it? A decline in traditional media advertising.

It's only been a few days since the Blog Council annouced its birth. Since then many bloggers have criticised the idea. Others have given it the benefit of the doubt. See Shel Israel (with links through to one of Dells bloggers take on it) and Jeff Jarvis

Founder members announced are AccuQuote, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Wells Fargo.

The Blog Council is a community for official corporate blogs and bloggers that represent major global corporations.

Our mission is to address the unique needs of blogging in a corporate environment.

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet, share tactics and advice, and develop best practices. The organization teaches responsible, ethics-based corporate blogging.

The Blog Council CEO Andy Sernovitz is also CEO of GasPedal, a Word of Mouth communication consultancy. He also was a co-founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing.

Having spend a large part of my working life in corporations (25 years) versus agency/freelance (9 years) I can fully understand where the Blog Council members are coming from. Look at the world of corporates - it is full of trade associations. Will it be just be a big talking shop or a 'best practice' forum? Will it help establish a legitimacy for other companies to start blogging? It holds it first meeting in January 2008.

Having been on Government working parties and trade associations I just hope it is one of those that does deliver value. Some of the founder companies are not active in Europe. Others are. I wonder if the multi-national vendors will look at things globally? The good news is that SAP have just had Shel complete a global 'social media' research project. Taking that to the first meeting would be a great first step.

Jennifer Jones from PodTech interviews Chris Pizzo on the perils of someone in the blogosphere 'smearing' you and damaging your online reputation.

As Chris says many companies are just not managing their online reputation. Whilst there are tools to help it is not as well established as traditional media monitoring. Yet the consequences of not actively monitoring and then participating in the blogosphere can be very painful (just as Dell did - see earlier post).

My experience is that most corporations are afraid of the online community. This is mainly due to the fear of loss of control. This is not like mainstream journalists or print media who have an uneasy relationship with companies that infact pay their salaries.

But to be fair to journalists I am sure it is the companies themselves who think they have some influence over print media. In reality they have little or none. Print media and journalists are better understood by business rather than independent people communicating via the blogosphere.

Secondly most businesses run on a longer timescale. Most trade publications are monthly or weekly. It takes time for a negative story to build usually. In that time the company can prepare a response.

With blogs the news travels fast. Very fast. Companies do not have many days let alone weeks before negative news can go 'viral' and word-of-mouth/mouse damages a companies reputation. 

The two key actions:

• Monitor online reputation
• Have a response action plan in place to handle blog 'swarms'

Coca Cola are to start a corporate blog - so says Paul Gillin in a recent post.

Check out the top 100 list from Virtual Hosting on bloggers about Web 2.0, blogging and social media.

I spoke to an official in the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) earlier today about the current status of the UK’s implementation of EU Directive 2005/29/EC – The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCP)

This Directive aims to harmonise legislation across the EU and improve consumer protection.

The issue for bloggers is that fake bloggers or bloggers who recommend 3^rd party products and do not disclose they have a contractual agreement with that company, could be in breach of this new law.

I asked the BERR official two direct questions:

     Q:  If a blogger promoted a 3^rd party product or service and did so without

          disclosing any financial or contractual relationship would that be a breach?

     A: Yes. For example if a hotel employee or an agent or other 3^rd party wrote a review of a hotel and posted it on a forum or user comment site

         like TripAdvisor without declaring the business relationship it would be a breach.

     Q: If a blogger recommended a book on their site and provided a link to an e-merchant and in turn received a commission then would it be a

         breach?

     A: Maybe or maybe not. This is a grey area. In the UK it would take a court action to determine if it was a breach. For example a person may

         write a review of a book and link it to Amazon and receive a commission. There is no contractual relationship per se but it maybe deemed that

         by the blogger signing up to be an Affiliate and receive commission on sales it is in effect a ‘commercial practice’

The UCP legislation is being implemented to stop unfair behaviour towards customers and make business clearly identify ‘advertorial’ or ‘misrepresentative’ marketing by misleading consumers.

Misleading commercial practice is defined as:

• Contains false information
• Deceives or is likely to deceive the average consumer

And

• Causes or is likely to cause a transactional decision that would not have been otherwise take

The two watchwords that bloggers need to take into account – transparency and disclosure. At all costs they should avoid ‘advertorial’ without disclosing the fact.

The EU have provided a useful guide.  

Directive 2005/29/EC should have been enacted into UK legislation by the summer of 2007 to be in force by December 12 2007 but it is late and not expected now until the Spring of 2008. The UK will be repealing and updating a number of consumer protection laws and this has delayed matters.

For a status of other EU country implementations of the Directive see the EU site.

The BBC is conducting an experiment using blogs to decide the content of the PM radio programme. They call it iPM.

I checked out the details with Chris Vallance of the BBC today what they are doing with it.  

The idea is to add real interactivity to the programme. As one of the team, Rubert Allman says,

iPM is a weekly programme as well as a podcast. The “i” stands for interactive and “i” as in something personal. You can discuss ideas with the production team on this blog and during the course of the week you can view and comment on stories that are being lined up for Saturday's programme.

Chris explains that the ideas for content comes from two sources – conversations on the blogosphere (which the team is tracking and monitoring for potential news stories) and listeners suggestions. Comments on the blog influence the content of the programme although the ‘editorial’ team do the final selection.

At the moment there are no plans to engage ‘citizen journalists’.

There is no set end date for the experiment (although Chris mentioned the end of December) and no pre-agreed measure of what ‘success’ will look like. It will be up to us as listeners to influence the programme and ensure the experiment is continued.

The 10^th of November at 5.30pm is the date of the first programme.

If you have an idea for an item drop the team a comment on their blog.

There is also a Facebook group page.

John Chambers, CEO of CISCO has done a video podcast. Check it out on the Cisco blog.

I have long been an advocate of a CEO and the senior management team using audio and video to help get their message across to internal and external audiences. While there is always a place for the corporate ‘state-of-the-nation’ video with a full crew and studio in use, there is a lot to be said for a straight forward conversation. Look at John in his formal 'suited and booted' picture on the web. Now look at John in the video - just like you would see him in a staff meeting.  

Many years ago I was in Corporate Communications and had to run the monthly and quarterly employee updates. We made extensive use of video to capture senior executives feedback on what was happening. In those days it was a major exercise as everything had to be physically distributed to the local offices on tape. We still had to get all employees into their local office to access a video recorder as not everyone had one at home. To be honest with almost 2000 employees in Europe we just did not have the budget and logistics resources to send tapes to everyone anyway!

Today those logistic worries and costs have reduced to almost zero. Using the internet and broadband video and audio feeds can be delivered to a desktop wherever people are based.

Dell are doing some remarkable things. A real turnaround from the 'dark days' of a couple of years ago. They are not fully recovered but are getting there. Shel Israel has just posted that Dell are moving ahead of many in the blogosphere by having an Investor Relations blog called Dell Shares.

As Lyn Tyson, VP, Dell Investor Relations says in the first post

"Dell Shares is not just about us and Dell financial information.  It is also about you. Relationships are two way streets with shared benefits and responsibilities.  So, we expect to listen and learn from you - our investors and those participating in this journey. "

I know how amazing this is as I managed IR for a major technology company for 3 years back in the late 1990's and have helped a lot of large UK multinationals prep and practice their analyst presentations over the last 8 years. Every comma and pause for breath has to run by Corporate and legal as it is a mine field of regulations and potential legal class actions.

So how are they addressing these issues? Before getting to the blog posts you arrive at a Disclaimer page and have to sign an acknowledgement form. Neat.

FIR (For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report) has a podcast interview with Lyn Tyson.

• Secondary strike action is banned in the UK. But what about in Second Life?

VNUnet is reporting that IBM has a Second Life strike on its hands. IBM has been active in Second Life for some time. A dispute with their Italian business office in real life has resulted in workers picketing the IBM offices in Second Life.

• CRM 2.0? So where does CRM go next?

The PR Week/Brands2Life latest annual survey shows UK business uptake of podcasting, blogging and posting of videos on YouTube have increased significantly over the last 12 months.

In their survey they showed 44% of businesses are using podcasts, 41% now use blogging and 15% have posted a video on YouTube.

The blogging figures show a massive increase from only 4% to 41%. They caution that most companies seem to be experimenting rather than having a strategy for the active use of social media.

I will try and get some more details of the research as these seem very high numbers from my personal experience.

All the presentations from the Social Tools for Business Use seminar from last week are now online at Focus Business Communications apart from one presenter who is seeking clearance from their legal department.

We actually were uploading the audio files immediately after the presentations finished. So in effect it was a virtual 'webcast' of the event. Within 15 minutes prresentations were online.

There were about 40 delegates present at the conference over the the 2 days. As at 5pm Tuesday 17th - 5 days after it finished - the audio files had been accessed 268 times.

What does this show?

• Majority of the visitors will have been sent to listen by delegates and presenters telling their networks about them either through 'word of mouth'  or blogs. We did not do a press release or other marketing to drive traffic to the recordings so far.
• The attendee to listener ration is just over 1:6 (40 attendees to 268 listeners)

For companies this is a perfect way to add value to any event they organise especially when getting people to attend is hard because of their workload and time constraints. In a