Friday, December 07, 2007
Big business fails to understand blogging
Big business is notorious for failing to either understand the Internet or to use it effectively. Indeed, the vast majority of large corporations have web sites which have cost them tens of thousands but which have no impact on their income. In other words, for most businesses, the Internet actually costs them money, rather than makes them money.
Even those large businesses who earn money from their web sites are not earning as much as they should or could. They appear happy with 2% conversion rates - a rate at which they would shut down their High Street operations without thinking twice.
Now, we discover they have got together in a group called "The Blog Council" to discuss blogging. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against big business forming a community to help them discuss things. But it's the thinking behind it that is telling. According to The Blog Council - which has Coca Cola, Dell and Microsoft amongst its members - "corporate blogging is different". Er, no it isn't.
It doesn't matter how big or small your organisation is, blogging is the same. It is holding a conversation with your audience. Simple. Apparently, says The Blog Council, big businesses "have to speak for a corporation, but never sound corporate". Well you shouldn't "sound" corporate in anything you do. That's why so many big business fail to engage with their customers - they seem to think that being big means speaking in some dreadful language invented by MBA students to make them sound important.
Then The Blog Council says that big firms "have to reconcile the often contrasting rules of corporate communications and blog etiquette". Well if you need "rules" for communication, you're probably in deep doo-doo anyway. One of the reasons for huge turnovers in corporate staffing is that big businesses simply won't allow people to be themselves.
In other words, these views about corporate blogging indicate deep seated problems in the whole nature of big business. They clearly haven't even seen that the world is changing around them. The Internet is the biggest threat to corporations there has ever been - indeed, we don't need them at all any more. It's perfectly possible to set up multibillion pound enterprises with a loosely organised community of people all working independently, all being themselves, rather than some corporate robot.
The Blog Council's concepts indicates that the desire for big business to have some kind of group of clones working for them is still rife. Younger generations are rejecting that notion in huge numbers. Combine that with the lack of big business to engage with the Internet and they are sealing their own death warrants.
And it's not just me who think The Blog Council have got this wrong. Take a look at The Marketing Pilgrim's views.
Labels: blogging
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Unbelievable isn't it?!
Another blog I read regularly is that of Seth Godin, the well-known marketing writer. One theme which keeps reoccuring is that of "becoming big by acting small".
Blogging is a great way of facilitating this. If you want to be successful, you have to stand for something, otherwise you're no different from your competitors. And if your difference is meaningful, like it should be, can you really get it across in a one sentence mission statement? And if you could, would anyone read it?
Blogs are a great opportunity for even large corporate CEOs to build some depth and meaning in to their offering and make a real connection with their clients. They don't need to descend in to "yoof speak" or anything, just to let their guard down a little bit and appear human.