Strategy: When to Use Blogs?

We are rapidly moving from figuring out "why" to blog to "how" to blog.  But before we get to the mechanics of blogging itself, we have to make some strategic decisions about how to engage in the blogosphere and the type of blog we might want to produce.  Beginning with the latter, Dr. Ansgar Zerfass, a noted authority on PR in Germany (author of 13 books) presented us with food for thought at the EuroBlog2006 Research Symposium.  I found the following two slides of his presentation valuable, and am reproducing them here (as thumbnails - click on image for a full-size version).  You can download the entire presentation here.

Dr. Zerfass gives us eight types of blogs, and places them on into strategic context based on your strategic objectives, such as sharing knowledge, building reputation or resolving conflicts. This classification of corporate blogs is very important, and I look forward to your thoughts on it.

His second slide gives us an example of a strategy-exposure grid to help us do a risk-benefit analysis of what strategies to use to enter the blogosphere, from engaging with bloggers to blogging yourself, depending on your brand exposure. 

I think that both of these slides offer useful tools for thinking about how and when to engage with the blogosphere most appropriately.  I'll be using them in my presentations (with grateful acknowledgment to Dr. Zerfass!).

Comments

[Trevor Cook]

Hey Elizabeth can I use these slides in presentations with attribution of course Trevor Cook

[Ansgar Zerfass]

Trevor: thanks a lot for your interest in my slides, I'd be glad to see you using and commenting on them. Any critics and further ideas are most welcome! - Ansgar Zerfass

[David Phillips]

Hi Elizabeth.

This is mischievous.

Can anyone enlighten me about why marketing is involved at all.
This is trying to put a new paradigm on an old model.

Just because marketers have big desks does not mean they have to be worshipped by academics. This is thinking that needs to go back into the oven.

In this matrix, there is need for relationship management which is PR using communications and value building.

Marketing communications is not possible.
Marketing has no role in interactive relationships.
The five P's, market segmentation, and that stuff has no place in marketing among interactive communities.
The value chain is both disintermediated and beyond the control of the Principle.
The supplier, when responsive to the conversation, is king and manufacturer and distributor are now out of the loop.

The market is all in the relationship. Marketing has no role and advertising is only a marginal tool.

Market communications is a posh word for advertising.

I see no role for Marketing in any of the scenarios.

[kathy gill]

Thanks for the tip ... wish I could have been there!

[Nabeela Khatak]

The competition for customer attention is as intense as ever. Chris Parente, a colleague of mine and vice president at Strategic Communications Group, discusses in his article “Three Steps to Incorporating Blogs into Communications Programs” how a measured approach to incorporating this emerging communication channel can reap numerous competitive advantages. Read complete article at:

http://navigator.bacons.com/current/three_steps_incorporating_blogs.asp

Since blog entries often have a more personal voice, they reach customers in ways a company website can’t. This is where creative and well written blogs can really make a difference in getting people to keep coming back. Another way to do this is to merchandise your blogging as actionable sales content according to SmartCEO columnist Marc Hausman. He recommends sales teams forward blog comments to customers and prospects. Reference his article on more effective use of blogs at:

http://www.gotostrategic.com/blog/index.php?id=26

It is important to keep two points in mind, however, when working in the blogsphere :1) quality interaction is more important than quantity because you are targeting interested customers and peers in your particular market niche—where it counts most; 2) In order to have an effective blog presence, a company must have an interactive blog. One of the greatest myths about communications is that it is one-way activity of telling people with the underlying assumption that our message moves uninterrupted to the receiver and ends there. The reality is that communicating is a two-way activity in which feedback from the other party is crucial. One of the major functions of feedback is that it allows the senders to see how well they are accomplishing the objectives of the original communication. In brief, what distinguishes effective from ineffective communication is the ability to accurately interpret the feedback provided by the other party. In the business world that means your message gets out unfiltered to the right people, at the right time for close to nothing.

[Josh]

Love the diagram, nice blog.

[Internet Marketing Consultant]

If compnay offering regularly products it will more helpful. Sales after support may fulfill the blogs.
Blogs and RSS always being ther. Where regular people can integrate RSS and read regular products updates about the company's products.

[Seth Mazow]

Great slides, thanks for bringing these to a wider audience. I think NGOs are relatively slow to adopt emerging technologies, and slides like these help us convince our superiors about the benefits of blogs and podcasts.

[vince]

Great post but I hope that it's a cybernetical approach

Why>>>How and then back to >>>Why>>How

Blog is just another pipeline Intranet manager don't have to turn in Geeks ;-)