Australian IT - Blogging the brand (Chris Jenkins, MARCH 14, 2006)
The interview I had with Chris Jenkins last week has turned into an article which is in today's Australian. The article is online.
Chris has given me a promotion, so thanks for that Chris:
Microsoft developer platform evangelism general manager and corporate blogger Frank Arrigo sums up the rationale: "If you are not there talking to your customer, someone else is going to be.
Just for the record, I am not a General Manager and to be honest, I don't want to be either. As it turns out, I am a humble manager, with currently 12 wonderful people reporting to me, within the Developer Platform & Evangelism Group and I report into the Director of the Group, Norbert Haehnel, who in turn reports to the Country General Manager (and recently appointed Vice President), Steve Vamos.
The article is about the pros and cons of corporate blogging, with a succint summary:
Why You Would
Start a conversation and control the message to an extent
Give customers a say, collect feedback
Appear responsive
Seem more personal than conventional statements
Why You Wouldn't
Bad or off-message blogging could cause havoc
May bypass approval and vetting
Could appear try-hard or me-too
Takes time and resources
Needs an audience
The article mainly focuses on the Telstra experience, with their website, Now We Are Talking.
And of course, we have the corporate blog alarm bell ringer and this time it's an ageny guy - David Holmes, managing director of media agency OneDigital. Turns out, David likes blogs, but believes they can cause havoc because they make it easy to bypass normal approval processes for public statements. (Kinda like this :) )
Yup, I hear that all the time from folks who are all about controlling the message. Looks like my copy of Naked Conversations is going to do the rounds.
All in all, an ok article and Corporate Blogging continues to gets mainstream press coverage, and we can add The Australian's coverage to stories from The Bulletin over 12 months ago, Computerworld back in November, and most recently with Business Sunday.
[ Currently Playing : Forever In Blue Jeans - Neil Diamond - (03:39) ]
