Blogging and Types of Blogs - Assignment Example

Overview of blogging Weblogs or more commonly known as blogs are an online diary of posts sorted in reverse chronological order (Kent, 2008). With anew blog being created every seven seconds on the internet each day (MacDougall, 2005) blogs are used by journalists and politicians alike; they are used by individuals to express their thoughts – an extension of their personal diary. Blogging has created a fresh channel of communication which enables people to obtain news and political information (Gunter, 2009). Blogs are fluid in nature and are regularly updated by their authors. While some are content to be blog readers others maintain their own blogs. Research suggests that women are more likely than men to create blogs and most bloggers are aged under 30 (Gunter, 2009). Most bloggers live in urban areas and suburbs and tend to conceal their identity. The power and influence of blogs has grown to such an extent that today blogs are developed and maintained by groups and organizations. To attract the attention of the readers, blogs must contain interesting and relevant content that is regularly kept up to date. Blogs have the potential to reach the masses but it does not happen often. Some blogs are deliberately targeted at mass audiences with the objective of creating an alternative information exchange. Blogs have become the new channel for communication, for developing and maintaining relationships between the organization and the publics (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Blogs are being used by organization for guerilla marketing and attacking competition, for creating identification with publics, for sharing scientific breakthroughs and for knowledge management (Kent, 2008). While blogs have immense potential, they way they are currently used their utility as a public relations tool is limited. Types of blogs Traditional blogs have a narrow audience because they are personal in nature while news blogs like Slashdot attract mass attention and readers start posting their comments on it (Kent, 2008). Other types of blogs include commentary by CEOs, professionals and employees, customer service, knowledge management applications, marketing and promotion of organization and products. Organizational blogs have been found to be effective in building and maintaining relationships between the organization and the publics (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Organizational blogs are usually maintained by official representative of the organization and posted by the publics recognized by the organization. Organization blogs again can be of five types – Employee blog, Group blog, Executive blog, Promotional blog and Newsletter blog (Lee, Hwang & Lee, 2006). Review of literature on how blogging is being used for public relations purposes Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is essential to enhance public relations and the PR qualities being open to dialog, welcoming conversational communication, and providing prompt feedback (Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Effective communications enhances relationships by communicating with a sense of humour, admitting mistakes, treating others as human and providing links to competitors. PR practitioners can build and enhance relationships with key publics via relational strategies. These can be measured through four indicators including control mutuality, trust, satisfaction and commitment. Conversational human voice in CMC has been found to be an important quality of this channel of communication. Human voice also positively correlates with the four indicators of success of relational strategies employed by the organizations. This research found that human voice found to be greater in blog condition was an appropriate relational maintenance strategy in online context. Compared to a web site blogs have a more positive outcome because they can convey the human voice in the computer mediated context. Blogs in the field of public relations have several strengths such as an effective research tool, useful in message framing and as a persuasive tool (Kent, 2008). Blogs are threaded dialogue allowing the readers to post comments hence it is often filled up with personal opinions and irrelevant comments (Kent, 2008). However, they are effective as research tools and as message framing and persuasion tools. Public relation is based on research and hence blogs help to gather information and scan the environment but there is an exaggerated significance attached to blogs as a PR tool. Kent is of the opinion that while blogs have tremendous potential in the field of PR, the PR professionals and the managers do not have the right understanding how to utilize the tools available through the blogs. For blogs to be effective as a PR communication tool someone who understands the value of threads, some one trained in effective dialogue communication and someone who has the trust of the publics has to be appointed to maintain the corporate blog. Blogs such as Drudge Retort or Slashdot can be compared to media news site such as MSNBC.com, CNN.com, NYTimes.com, etc. From a public relations standpoint both produce news content but bloggers lack the credibility, training and objectivity that mainstream media possesses (Kent, 2008). Gunter, Campbell, Touri and Gibson (2009) contend that new blogs are virtuous because the independent bloggers can correct the errors and add detail to stories. They provide a wider range of opinions and perspectives than traditional media. Blogs can even alert the journalists to new stories or initiate stories. Bloggers are against the journalists whom they refer to as arrogant and working in self-interest. While Kent doubts the credibility of news blogs, Gunter et al discuss that the sheer volume of traffic that the blogs attract indicates their significance. The number of response that a blog receives bears testimony to its authority, believability and comprehensiveness. The nature of source behind the blog and the transparency of their agenda also add to the credibility of blogs. Kelleher and Miller (2006) find that human voice in CMC generates trust in blogs but Gunter at al contend that as the blogs become more prominent and influential, the question of trust arises. Trust in information available on the blogs is related to the low level of trust that people generally have on any information available on the internet. The public relations personnel that use the blogs more often attach greater credibility to them. For instance, Robert Scoble of Microsoft, the celebrity blogger, expresses his opinion on the company and its products (Lee, Hwang & Lee, 2006). He tells the story without any exaggeration and in a balanced manner. When the company faces undue criticism he actively defends the company through the blog and also supports it when the company has made a good decision. This enhances the public image of Microsoft and the audience gives credence to information and content available on his blog. A study conducted by Porter, Trammell, Chung and Kim (2007) found that blogs are not yet popular as standard public relations tool although practitioners do see the importance of blogs. Those who use blogs feel they have more expertise and prestige power than those who do not blog. Public relation practitioners do use blogs for informational purpose – to seek the latest view points, latest news, or experimenting with blogs for research purpose but all these do not give the bloggers the prestige and power that the professionals think it does. In any firm, maintaining organization - stakeholder relationship is the function of the public relations personnel. Stakeholders are known to create churns and the internet has increased the potential of the stakeholder churn (Coombs & Holladay, 2008). At the same time, the internet has become an effective communication tool to reach the like-minded individuals. Websites do not always add to the reputation of the website and similarly blogs too are deemed to be reputational threats borne out of the internet. Internet can generate negative word-of-mouth (WOD) but the public relations people are trying to seed blogs and discussion groups to evoke a positive message thereby suppressing the negative connotation. It is possible to post any message and spread it through viral marketing but not all messages become viral. However, since the potential does exist, and this potential urges organizations to monitor what is being aid about them and also counter the messages that can be problematic. When an issue becomes an internet contagion, activist groups have the power to disseminate the information through blogs or compliant portals. Public relations have to learn from the activists and hive them a hearing because such activists have the power to create stakeholder churn and as internet become popular, the power of activist’s increases. While activists can create agitation there should be some coding principles that are adhered to. According to O’Reilly (2007) the blogger must take responsibility not for his own blog but also for the comments that are allowed on the blog. Blogs carry unacceptable content like threats, abuse, and harassment, false or defamatory information. Bloggers must be willing to acknowledge mistakes and correct errors. Anonymous comments should be eliminated by the blog owner because most often the anonymous comments are nasty. They would never write such things had they revealed their identity. Activists of bullies post unwanted comments to create an agitation and such IP address should be banned when they violate the guidelines. This is a way of informing them that their comments are unacceptable without subjecting them to public shame. Sometimes a thread takes such a direction that the basic purpose is diluted and it tends to go awry. In such cases, the thread itself should be eliminated. Very often threats are posted on the threads and even if a reader comes across them, the one who has posted such material should be informed and asked to withdraw. Just as there are societal culture and corporate culture, there should be blog culture and every blogger or blog reader should abide by them. High levels of control are maintained over corporate blogs and companies such as IBM have also published employee blogging guidelines saying that the self-hosted blogs should clarify that the opinions are individual in nature and do not reflect the opinion of the management of IBM (Lee, Hwang & Lee, 2006). They also have intranets where employees are encouraged to voice their opinions so that they do not vent their feelings in a public venue. Companies realize that having a candid dialogue through the blog is an effective means of communication and can be used a marketing and public relations tool, if the right amount of control is exercised. Consumers, businesses, content publishers, and media channels have all embraced blogs because it has become a new way of reaching new and existing readers to build an ecosystem around relevant conversation (Solis, 2009). At the same time, microblogging and its activities like Twitter, FaceBook are attracting attention trying to build a statusphere – people tend to read, respond and share micro-sized updates. Thus online interaction has evolved beyond the host site through syndication. Technology has also made it possible to instantly interact with, respond, or promote blog content away from the source blog. One blog gives rise to distributed response in their respective communities and such action reverberates through out the social graph. This sets the stage to introduce new content to new people, forges new relationships. The authoritative characteristic of blogging has not reduced because it is now possible for bloggers to reach and resonate with new readers outside their ecosystem. Hence microblogging has grown in importance and prevalence. Many organizations are encouraging their employees to use blogs as a part of the wider marketing initiative to reduce the advertising costs. Blogs help to disseminate news and information about products and services and interact with potential customers (Scammell, 2006). However, Wyld (2008) warns that corporations should be very careful in entering the blogsphere. While engaging in corporate blogging, one has to be utterly genuine. Wal-Mart for instance ran into trouble when the blog that was supposedly created by a man and a woman traveling the country in an RV and staying in Wal-Mart parking lots, turned out to have been blogged by their public relations firm. This has been labeled as astroturfing which means to artificially create grassroot buzz for a company’s products and services. Executive blogs are also called planned corporate communications and hence not seen in the right perspective. By 2005 the number of blogs had rise to 21 million according to Technocrati although an increasing number of these are what is known as splogs or spurious or spam blogs. These are automatically set up by computer programs and are meant to attract the automated advertisements from firms such as Google (Quiggin, 2006). Blogs that are exclusively meant to provide information about a product are considered as marketing or promotional blogs. For instance, podcasting and video-casting blogs can run promotion and also spread word among certain networks (Raghavan 2006). It is a cost effective public relations tool to target small audiences. They also help to maintain stakeholder relationships. Implications for audience engagement and relationship management Thus Kelleher and Miller discuss about the human voice that enhances the computer-mediated communication through blogs and they found that this element positions the blogs better than company websites. Blogs were found to be more conversational element which websites do not. Kent compared blogs to the media and found that blogs lack the credibility and objectivity essential to fulfill the requirements of public relations. It is thus evident that the success of blogs as public relations tool depends on how the audience can be engaged, to what extent their trust can be captured and how the consumers accept it. The credibility of information is a matter of concern although it is possible to trace the source of the information. there are several infrequent readers and they may develop an impression after reading some blog post but may never return back to see that that information was false or that action has been taken against the blogger. However, many corporations are engaging in blogging even though its efficacy and credibility is still under doubt. It is a very cost effective tool for advertising and since through networking people get connected, it has a viral effect. Through regular communication, it is possible to develop relationship with the existing and potential customers as many marketers are practicing. Even firms like Microsoft and IBM use this as a platform for stakeholder management. Podcasting and video-casting are effective promotional tools but firms have to be overtly careful in how they project their image through theirblogs. The oublics today is educated and cannot be taken for granted or taken ‘for a ride’ as Wal-Mart tried to do. What this suggests is that the audience can be engaged through genuine advertising or writing through blogs. Problems and limitations of blogging While blogs help build credibility, they are also a platform where people voice their opinions. It is easy to differentiate between opinions and business talk and the very nature of the blog-talk may hinder business propositions (Raghavan 2006). Because of lack of rules or codes of conduct governing the blogsphere, organizations are not too keen to embrace and understand the potential of blogs as a public relations tool (Lee, Hwang & Lee, 2006). Because of its democratic self-expression, there are conflicts between employee bloggers and the management over what is appropriate blogging. It has also led to many employees being terminated from their jobs following wrongful postings on their blogs. Blogs help an organization to understand what the people feel about the company or the product and in times of crises such views may also give shape to the planning process but Kent argues that mostly fanatics visit the blogs and post their opinions and hence not much credence can be attributed to their opinions. Kent finds communicative risks in blogging because organizational bloggers are not trained in communication and dialogue. Even though it is felt that blogs are anonymous postings, it is possible to trace the blog posting and hence PR professionals should not attempt to lie about what they represent or disguise their identity or pretend to be what they are not. Organizations are not ready to take public stance on an issue. Another aspect where blogging is not of much utility to the PR professionals is the fact that very few accidental readers would chance upon the organizational blog and hence the organization primarily reaches the self-selected readers that already share or oppose the organization’s views (Kent, 2008). Blogs are poorly written and nobody except those already interested in the subject read the blogs. The actual value of blogs as a public relations tool is unclear. As a communication tool, there is no comparison between word-of-mouth (WOM) and blogs (Mack, Blose & Pan, 2008). The blogsphere at this time is not designed to facilitate learning as is possible in WOM or face-to-face relationships and hence may not have the influential role. Conclusion Different perspectives on blogging including different types of blogging and different types of corporate blogging have been reviewed. While corporate blogging is on the increase, companies need to be very clear on their objectives. Their approach too has to be genuine and should not mislead the people. Many companies are encouraging their staff to disseminate information about the products and services and to interact with the potential customers but the blogsphere does not follow the codes of conduct. Corporate blogs are used as a communication tool to build relations with the different stakeholders. Limitations do exist like till date it has been able to generate the same confidence as WOM. Besides, people blog about just anything and post comments that are abusive or derogatory. These can lead to a negative image of the blogger or the organization. Blogs can process messages; they are a valuable persuasive tool but can also cause extensive damages to reputation. Anyone can post anything and this has led to the question of trust and credibility of the information on the blogs. Anyone becomes a blogger but there are many spam blogs on the internet. Quality blogs that are genuine are difficult to differentiate but the value of blogs as a communications tool cannot be undermined even though even executive blogs have come under the scanner. However, even though technology is being utilized, the blogsphere needs some strict monitoring and control by some authority which can help this concept to improve and thereby increase its efficacy as a public relations tool. 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