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For an informal touch Blogging to get closer to the customers seems to be a success mantra of the day

Macromedia, the company that makes DreamWeaver, Flash, Cold Fusion and Fireworks has earned a lot of goodwillby bringing the closed-door product development process out in the open through blogging. It first used blogging to get information out fast. Then the product developers shared their thoughts on the features and later on, it asked customers as to how they felt about the new features. Thus, it directly tied customers with their product design team.

“Big companies look physically and emotionally stand-offish, little islands unto themselves,” opines Ravi Prakash, a management consultant, adding: “They are completely cut off from the societal context.” To mitigate that, well, we have ‘corporate social responsibility’.

“But blogs with informal tone can engage people on a larger scale,” he adds: “Getting people emotionally involved with the brand, which is what advertising normally does.”

With old-school PR techniques looking like ho hum and jargon-laden press releases pissing off whoever reads it, incorporating blogs into business has gained traction.

Corporate blogging has two elements: internal and external. In the former, the employees can view, post and participate in the ongoing conversations within the company. It helps them find their voice in the company and build better coordination among them. Moreover, blogging by employees about their work, workflow knowledge, and process can help them gain a lot in terms of informal learning, which makes them perform better.

In the latter, employees, spokespersons and CEOs of a company share their views with the public. “A business sustains itself through relationships” says Sridhar.G, a marketing executive. “And relationships sustain themselves through constant interaction,” he adds. Blogs with informal ‘hey-this-idea-rocks’ kind of approach can connect well with customers on an emotionally personal level.

Though most of the ‘corporate blogs’ sound like sophisticated PR exercises, blogs with employees posting frank discussions on issues, judicious criticism of the company’s policies and even praise for innovative products or services from competitors have given the blogs and the companies concerned tremendous credibility. “Yeah, employee blogs really help the company in the long run because people view it as an honest assessment of the company’s performance,” agrees Narayana, a marketing consultant.

Robert Scoble, in and out of Microsoft, gets huge readership though his blogsite Scobilizer for his great posts on technology, blogging and software industry. By letting ‘unfiltered voices’ heard all over Microsoft has changed its image as a relentless Godzilla stamping out small creatures. The employee blogs mirror the changing practices at Microsoft.

“Blogs get valuable feedback on how a service or a product is performing,” points out Rajesh, a company executive. “And the company can quickly respond to it.” Companies generally don’t encourage employees directly communicating through blogs with the public because of the fear that they may screw up its image or simply because they do not wish that one Mr. Dick should corner all the credit on behalf of the company. Fear of slipping into a state of oblivion is also prompting an increasing number of corporate bodies to take to blogging. They might as well meet the fate of dinosaurs. With people getting increasingly sourced-up, and sometimes ahead of the curve, companies better keep the conversations going. Blogging establishes, as David Weinberger, the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto says: “A connection through real human beings speaking like real human beings, which is something companies have forgotten how to do.”

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