Chris Herot And Me On Blogs

Chris Herot from Convoq and I were talking the other day at Naked Fish about business blogs and whether the risks we anticipated when I wrote the piece last year in Harvard Business Review (A Blogger In Their Midst) had actually panned out or not. Chris' marketing guy had asked him about having a blog in a company -- thumbs up or thumbs down -- he wanted to know. Chris had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject. I could barely keep up with him.

The piece I wrote last year in Harvard Business Review was a case study of a company trying to deal with their worst nightmare -- a smart, loudmouthy, well-loved, radical weblogger as an employee. Even if your company was in this kind of a pickle, I'd still vote to keep the weblog and see what good might come of it.

First I think blogs come as close as anything to fresh word-of-mouth buzz marketing and so I think there's much more upside than downside to having a company blog.

That said, I think you really have to bite the bullet and let someone who really may not always agree with you in the company, do your blogging.

If you have to vote for someone with a fresh voice and real criticism of the powers that be within your company OR a dead-voiced PR corporate communications blog, always pick fresh -- it's like vegetables. You may have to dodge some bullets or stamp out some fires thanks to that kind of blogger, but the trade-off is worth it. The trade-off is a voice of great intimacy and knowledge talking about your product or service directly to your customers.

So you have this blogger and she scribbles on her weblog about what's right with what you're selling and she writes about what's wrong -- and I still say, she helps you more by writing about what's wrong and asking her readers to comment as well than giving her readers the rah-rah-I-love-my-product cheer. She will give people extremely high blood pressure in your company. Deal with it. She will invite extremists to flame your blog site. Some of the silly flame comments can be ignored, but there might be one or two very valuable nuggests that fall into your lap thanks to this blogger.

But what's really going on is establishing word-of-mouth intimacy based on a bedrock of credibility. I'm sorry, but if you think advertising on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, in magazines or even on the sides of buses can do this -- you're wrong. They may create brand awareness of your brand, but they don't create brand lust.

A good blog that allows for an honest consideration of the product, the market, the industry where that product lives and dies and gives useful information to customers is beyond amazing in this world of phony-baloney advertising. I've seen my kid since age 5 know that most of the commericals on TV are completely bogus and enjoy throwing things at the screen when they are on.

Chris and I were talking about Coke -- and Vanilla Diet Coke in particular -- which I tried and started to like because the blogger Denise Howell was raving about it. Denise sold a lot of coke in that one recommendation. So a blogger who can do something like that can push you way ahead.

I love Vanilla Diet Coke and if there were an easy way for me to advertise it on my blog, I would. I still think the perfect advertising match for blogs and advertising would be to have bloggers make up ads -- like here's Halley's personal Vanilla Diet Coke ad.

I hate Coke with Lime that reminds me a little of janitor-in-a-drum cleaning liquid. But by sayind that, I remind you that I am critical, if not down right bitchy and it only gives my recommendation of Vanilla Diet Coke that much more credibility.

Anyway Chris, thanks for lunch and all the great talk. Yes, I know I said it was off the blog, but I did run this by you, right?