The title of Sony Electronics first blog post, by Rick Clancy, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, identifies the blog as a transparent and authentic medium for communication and conversation. Clancy reveals his blogging strategy right off the bat.
The majority of blog posts will be written by Clancy. With the help of moderators, he will respond to relevant comments. Like a good blogger, Clancy plans to write at least weekly. He acknowledges not everyone will appreciate the blog, but he is going to use this medium to inform consumers about Sony initiatives as well as to address controversial issues and any misunderstandings about Sony.
Writing a blog is time consuming and revealing, but Clancy is prepared to take the time to provide meaningful personal experiences relevant to Sony. The content of the blog will deal with topics ranging from product issues and events to affiliated Sony companies. Clancy established guidelines for commenting and indicated comments will be moderated before posting. Clancy’s first post provided readers with a framework of the blog to establish expectations for participants.
Engaged in a competitive market, Sony needed to establish a way to interact with their consumers directly. With an audience invested in social media, Sony had to meet their audience online and establish a blogging strategy that would be effective. Sony worked with Nielsen Buzz Metrics and Forrester Research and together decided a blog would be their next step for building relationships. Sony realized early on that all feedback is good feedback because it provides an opportunity for Sony to be a part of the conversation.
Why would a corporate communicator be in charge of a company’s external blog? In the following video, Rick Clancy answers this question by arguing corporate communicators are strong writers, communicators and are willing to take the time to listen to their audience. Content is important in the blog, but reading and listening to comments before deciding on the best response can positively impact the relationships the blog helps to foster.
Clancy takes a book, I mean blog tour around the United States to different Sony Style stores to talk to consumers, employees and other stakeholders. The goal is to form dialogues to determine how the blog can be more relevant to the audience to increase traffic on the blog and consequently, Sony’s websites.
After reading this post and the other readings provided, I realized how important it is for a company to have a corporate blog that is maintained. Like you said, this is to build trust and lasting relationships. Blogging is becoming the most influential way that corporations can reach their consumers and various other publics. This interaction is crucial and Sony is doing it right by engaging their consumers in a medium that they understand and are beginning to use. Any feedback they receive is good feedback because they can grow and learn off the negative comments and know what they are doing well with the positive comments. As you said, relationships with these publics are important and companies need to be in this conversation.
I agree, Sarah, that before a company gets its blog up and running guidelines need to be laid out. What can employees talk about? What topics will be discusses? How often will the writer post? What audience is the blog targeted at? All of these are legitimate questions to ask before the first post. Without proper guidelines, corporate bloggers could run into legal issues, the blog could become too confusing for readers, or could be neglected.
Rick Clancy’s blog tour also interests me. I find myself asking, “How do I get readers to my blog, and get them interacting?” It’d be interesting to see how other corporations have 1.) gotten readers to their blogs and 2.) gotten them to comment.
Hey Sarah,
I agree with you and Rick Clancy about how to get people to read your corporate blog. Clancy has the right idea. Once you set-up a strategy to appraoch your blog, CEOs still need to understand the right way to talk to consumers. There needs to be a give and take. Stemming back from your first post I remember that many people do not trust corporate blogs.
I found an interesting fact in a blog written by Josh Catone, a product evnagelist for a small start-up company. In his blog post, “Corporate Blogging: Your Doing it Wrong” http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/12/12/corporate-blogging-youre-doing-it-wrong/, he states a fact from Forrester Research saying most people don’t trust corporate blogs because they simply restate company news releases. Clancy definitely has the right idea. He needs to be the one writing and responding to customers. More users will read the blog, and with Sony being such a popular company viral marketing will spread about the credibility and authenticity of Clancy’s blog. Ultimately improving the entire reputation of the company.
Thank you Lindsey. I will keep those questions in mind for future posts.