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Health Check: How Trusted Is Your Corporate Blog?

Categories: Social MediaPosted on December 10th, 2008

Today, I’m going to play doctor, in fact, I’m a specialist: A corporate blog doctor. Most corporate blogs aren’t trusted, and here’s a very simple heuristic health check to gauge whether your corporate blog is going to be trusted by your readers.

This is a quick and dirty scorecard, if I was going one for a real Forrester report, it would be far more conclusive, weighted , detailed, quantitative, and scientific, but today, this is just a quick example, to illustrate a point we already know, let’s get to it, please, turn your head and cough:

Health Check: How Trusted Is Your Corporate Blog?

1. Writing style:
How you write indicates how real you can truly be

Great: Blog is written in a human voice
Bad: Content looks vetted by corp comm
Horrible: Rehashed press release

2. Topics:
What does the blog talk about? does it matter to marketing –or customers?

Great: Discusses the lifestyle (or workstyle) of actual customers
Good: Discusses the wider industry topics
Horrible: The corporate blog exclusively talks about the company

3. Humility:
Perhaps one of the most important attributes, how human and real is this blog, or is it giving lip service?

Great: Admits when wrong and discusses in open the short comings of the company and product and demonstrates in public how it will be improved
Good: Admits shortcomings but combats and defends the criticism, also known as spin
Bad: Only discusses the company in the best possible light, and may link, but not take on critics
Horrible: Never discuss the short comings of the company on the blog

4. Linking Behavior:
Links are the currency of the blogosphere, it indicates you respect someone else’s opinion so much that you’re willing to send them away from you.

Great: Links out to other sources, even competitors or critics as well as the next listed
Good: Links out to other sources, where other discussions are occurring
Bad: Primarily links to corporate created content 25% of the time
Horrible: Primarily links to corporate created content over 50% of the time

5. Customer Inclusion:
Do corporate blogs allow their customers to partake? or are they only second class citizens

Good: Allows for customers to guest blog, or includes snippets of their experiences
Bad: Content is only published by employees

6. Dialog:
Allowing for feedback can instill more trust

Great: Comments enabled and published instantly
Good: Comments enabled but reviewed causing time delay
Bad: Trackbacks only
Horrible: No comments allowed

7. Comment Moderation:
Blogs that allow for disagreeing comments are more real –and interesting.

Great: Comments (other than spam or off topic) are allowed, including direct disagreements
Bad: Negative comments are censored or altered
Horrible: No negative comments allowed

8. Frequency:
While more isn’t always better, having a steady rhythm of content is important

Good: A steady publication rate of posts appropriate to the speed of that market
Bad: Posts appear at a random rate, often starting off with apologies for not posting
Horrible: Posts appear to either promote the company during an announcement –or to combat a competitor

What’s missing? leave a comment
What other categories do you think should be criteria? Leave a comment and I’ll add it in, and credit you.

Update: Joe Wilcox from Microsoft Watch suggests that ’story telling‘ be an attribute to consider. He makes a good point, but I could add that under the content, or writing style. Not all blogs need to tell stories, some are blogs for product updates, or even support, but I get his point, thanks Joe.

The Doctor’s Diagnosis:

Strong specimen, keep at it: If you’re tallying up your corporate blog (you should ask your readers to help, so you’re a bit more unbiased) and you find that your blog is receiving many good or great scores, in fact over 75%+ of them, you’re on the way to be one of the 16% of trusted bloggers.

On the way, but go back to the gym: If you’re getting borderline at 50-75% , with only about half the criteria being good or great, you’ve got some improvements to make.

Minor Illness –but needs treatment: If you’re getting 25%-50% of the scores in good or great, you really need to evaluate your efforts and think if your corporate cultures is right for this, or if you even have the right bloggers on staff.

Terminally Ill: Lastly, if less than 25% of your criteria is good or great, you really need to consider shutting it down –you’re not getting it and your culture, strategy, or team should focus elsewhere. Giving you the advice to take two in the morning ain’t going to cut it, it’s time for euthanasia.

If this were a report, I would construct a scoring mechanism to help provide a sense of direction for this heuristic evaluation, or even more accurate, I would poll the actual readers of the blog to find out their opinions, but for the most part, the writing is literally on the wall.

Physician heal thyself: I guess I should also ask, how trusted do you think my web strategy blog is?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 7:53 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments
  • Thanks for your check list, how many patients do you have? ;-)
  • Thanks for the list. Quick question, what about location of blog on company Web site. If it's a consumer facing blog, should there be a link or navigation tab on homepage to direct reader to the blog landing page? Or should there be snippets of blog on homepage?
  • Thanks for clarifying this, Jeremiah.

    Too many times people read reports to conclude why "not" to do things. It's not that corporate blogs can't be trusted, its just that the garbage that many companies throw into them causes readers to distrust them.

    It's all about the content. If your corporate blogger is providing so much valuable information that is useful to customers and prospects alike, trust will come.
  • ThanhT: Just you...

    Ame: That's a different questions, and won't directly impact trust.

    Ron: It's more than content though, that's what this list highlights!
  • Thanks a lot for this post. I've been working with our corporate blogs for about a year now, and we're steadily improving them. I think we do fairly well with them all around, according to your regimen above.

    One thing about allowing instant comments, and that is I'd be happy to do it if it weren't for other industry peers putting self-promoting statements and making it seem like they're adding to the content. So, we lose some marks on that. But, at least others are losing way more.

    Cheers!
    Rob
  • Thanks for the post. This is the part that will continuously need to be fleshed out in response to the low trust by consumers identified in Josh Bernoff's report.

    We are trying to meet the 8 checklist points you mention above. It is not always easy either due to resource constraints or internal pressure, but we are getting better every month.

    I will be forwarding this post to our internal brand social media teams. It will definitely get them thinking about how to improve their efforts.
  • Rob J

    Some have allowed comments to publish in real time, then were unpublished if they didn't meet the requirements of the comment policy.

    The key is to make the policy visible for readers of the corporate blog.
  • Jeremiah,

    Great list, as always. You've got a great touch for making this stuff real.
  • Alexa
    Jeremiah,

    Thanks for another great post (as usual). I recently moved into the marketing department at Mzinga and one of the things I've been commissioned with doing in the new year is establishing a healthy blogging program.

    A lot of our senior leaders blog and while we have some really good practices under our belt (open commenting, human voice, etc), there's still a long way to go.

    When it comes to social media jobs, I anticipate the need for future "Editor in Chief 2.0" type roles in the near future. With only 16% of corporate blogs trusted, the best prescription a company can be offered is an actual person to help manage a company's UGC (user-generated content).

    I think a lot of corporate bloggers can read this post and see value, but it's helpful to have an internal resource to make sure they follow through.

    Alexa
  • Any thoughts on how many bloggers should you have on your corporate blog? I have hotly debated this with a few people. I am a big proponent of having multiple bloggers for corporate blogs. Just today, I saw a company that put all their blogging eggs in one basket and lost. Eloqua's Innovative Marketer blog was written solely by Steve Gershik. TOA Technologies announced yesterday that he is their new VP of Marketing. Now Eloqua will have to start from scratch.

    Also, does having multiple viewpoints help with being trustworthy?
  • Hi Jeremiah

    You've come a very long way since your days at HDS. You've turned into the oracle for all of us corporate social media types, so keep up the good work!

    As far as this post, I would guess that I'm a wannabee "strong specimen" as a corporate blogger.

    I'd be stronger in your measurement system, but there are certain personal principles that I won't compromise, and my quest for authenticity conflicts sometines with your guidelines.

    A couple of thoughts to help influence your thinking?

    When I think about my rationale for corporate blogging, it's less about "trusted" and more about "influental".

    Sure, I'd like you to trust me through my blog, but what I really want is to influence your thinking and those of your peers.

    So I think there's a reasonable discussion about what the right metric might be -- trust, or influence?

    Second, there's a whole aspect of your guidelines that might be missing, e.g. do you have anything interesting to say?

    As you might know, I'm fairly controversial in our little industry space, but I routinely get kudos for having an interesting perspective, and not being shy about engendering controversy.

    I could be 100% on your guidelines (which are quite good, BTW), and still be boring as watching paint dry. You, for example, definitely have something to say, which makes all that other stuff a bit less important, in my book.

    How about shaping the guidance a bit?

    Keep up the good work, bro!

    -- Chuck
  • Ok ok. For once, uh, um, er, you literally took the words right out of my mouth? ;-)

    Darnnit, that 'tact' thing really does sound schweet. I'm taking notes.

    A wise Dr such as yourself should accept Twitter follows from little tadpoles swimming aimlessly in the ponds of knowledge. *hint* *hint*

    If that doesn't cut it, can I convince you of my wonderful ReTweet skills? It's really quite amazing. You should see it sometime. http://twitter.com/Kimberly_Bock

    Would a pretty please work?..

    Sugar on top?..
  • Thanks for the list. I was thinking of such a list when I read your previous blog. Especially since I thought that we, as a company, were blogging in the right way and compared to this checklist we are blogging in the way it is intended.

    Thanks for the self confidence boost ;)
  • Awesome checklist. The "corporate blog health consultant" may yet be the next trendy new job, or at least part of the job description of a PR person. This list may prove to be really useful.
    Thanks for sharing!
  • Chuck (one of EMC's corporate bloggers) really has opened the company up beyond the three letter monoliths and spits occasionally fire to get influence.

    I'd agree with you about the 'do you have anything interesting to say' point. You're the second one to suggest that.
  • Mark

    Those roles came and went, they weren't hired for long. The thing is, most companies can figure out social media, at least how to do it. Sadly, many don't do it right.
  • Amen. Exactly right. Thanks for adding light, not just heat, to the discussion.
  • Jeremiah, the single most important piece on this list is the human factor. Marketers have a knack for making the authentic seemed canned and untrustworthy. The social Web provides a platform for dialogue, speak like humans do.
  • Jeremiah--Do you have any data as to whether the branding of the site influences trust levels, e.g., is a corporate branded site less trustworthy than an individual site whose content is focused on corporate issues? Does having an informal photo of the blogger on the site earn it more trust? Just curious. Thanks for the great post!
  • Also bad for dialog: required registration. For whatever audience the blog's supposed to have, why should they have to sign up? If I've never commented, it's one more barrier. if I've commented elsewhere, it's a damned nuisance. (Name and email for comment is fine; I'm talking about "register for Morass.com in order to comment.")

    I like to see a way to contact the individual poster, especially when there are multiple authors on a single blog. That might not suit the organization, but I ought to be only two clicks away, max, from (a) a list of all your posts, (b) your bio/background, (c) contact info for you.

    From the corporate side, the process is the product: the conversations that blogging makes possible are a potential rich source of information from customers, partners, others. From the individual's side, though, the product trumps all: what's in it for me? Through the blog, can I extend my knowledge, build my skill, resolve my problem, improve my results, expand my network? (Press releases rarely help me do these things.)
  • Jeremiah - thanks for the post. I just saw the survey results and found them very interesting. I am not surprised at all about the top three. I plan to share your tips and perhaps write a couple of prescriptions...
  • This is a great post. I'd add two other things to your list.

    Firstly "professionalism" - thinks like spell checking, grammar and so on. Many corporate blogs I've seen suffer from a lack of professionalism and this reduces their trustworthiness.

    Secondly, I'd add "editorial process" - traditional publishers succeed because their content goes through a process of refinement by editors. Corporate blogs would fare much better of their was editorial review prior to publication (rather than "approval").
  • Dawn
    Personally, I find all the comments at the end of an article really annoying, especially if I am trying to print out for later reference.

    I would prefer it if the original writing was available for print without all the comments.
  • Dawn, just copy and paste my post into word and you're fine.

    Do note that some of the most intelligent insights are within the comments. I won't pretend that I know it all.
  • This is a pretty good list. I have recently come across a few company blog that have comments disabled. I can't for the life of me understand this. A blog isn't a blog without comments. come on people. I would never come back or subscribe to a blog that has no comments. What's the point without comments?
  • This is great info to guide those who do not have a corporate blog already.

    Be human, be humble, be inclusive, respect & act on feedback, and have something to say worth reading to those who would come read your blog.

    My company is working towards putting out a corporate blog and i hope to influence the direction we take it with advice like you've laid out here. We've already had the 'powers that be' try to limit who we can link to ... and I've had to push back on that mindset from the beginning :)

    @jeremiah_owyang When a company is starting out a blog which of these would you suggest take primary importance?


    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • I guess we're in ICU!

    Need more than defibrillator to revive our site but still expecting miracle and won't go towards the light yet!

    Thanks, Dr. Owyang!
  • I have been building up my blog and ITS TOUGH!! I am not corporate, but my blog is for business (I'm a realtor) and its tough to keep up the frequency. I have lots of good ideas, but its just a matter of getting enough time to write and shoot video...
  • Deanna
    Corporate blogs must become a trusted resource for consumers.

    Respond – Reflect on how the company took action or changed its behavior based on the feedback received from consumers (see # 5 Customer Inclusions or # 6 Dialogues). Consumers must feel as if their ideas are of value and the company must share good examples of how they are paying attention to the ever-changing world consumers live in.
  • How often must it be repeated that the customer is the most important cog in the wheel. Great post!
  • I do not think that corporate blogs can be trusted. That's why we do not have one.
  • […] Health Check: How Trusted Is Your Corporate Blog? - Nice discussion of what makes an organizational blog great. Being genuine and transparent is very helpful. […]
  • Thanks a lot. This is very good info about blog and blogging. I love this blog. Great
  • I do not think that corporate blogs can be trusted. That’s why we do not have one.
  • I do not think that corporate blogs can be trusted. That’s why we do not have one.
  • Thanks for this post, full of useful tips about writing a corporate blog. You have mentioned the specific areas to concentrate and how to carry those thing to a useful and successful blog. Thank you.
  • Hi,

    One of my favorite things about your blog is your use of specific examples to illustrate your point.I really appreciate the effort into this blog.

    Thanks,
    Mark Smith
  • All the eight points you mentioned are very important as well as good. The most interesting part of your discussion is that you have given three comparisons for each eight cases which makes it easy to understand and equally simple to follow.
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  • Jeremiah, this is obviously a very hot topic given the number of comments. While all the advice is sound, it's just the surface of the discussion. To truly create a great corporate blog you have to have a voice and an editorial mandate. This is absolutely no different than when a magazine, TV station, or any other publication creates an editorial direction. Every business has the opportunity to do this and be seen as such.

    Take a look at my article, "Be the Voice: Build Your Business by Becoming your Industry’s Thought Leader."
    http://bit.ly/19bSb5
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    One of my favorite things about your blog is your use of specific examples to illustrate your point.I really appreciate the effort into this blog.
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  • Great post. Trust shouldn't come easy, especially on the net. But it can be gained and kept with ethical approach to the way you deal with your online audience.
  • great post...thank you for the effort
  • i agree with what you say....
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  • thanks for sharing. this information ic valuable. thanks for sharing
  • It is not always easy either due to resource constraints or internal pressure, but we are getting better every month.
  • I think we do fairly well with them all around, according to your regimen above.
  • Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic.
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