Yesterday, Web useability expert Jakob Nielsen distributed his weekly alert, in which he advised corporations to NOT blog. Like many others, I disagree with most of his points.
However, there is one small bit of truth in his column to which companies should pay heed. He argues that the short, "bursty" form of blogs is not the best vehicle for corporate stories.
This in fact may be true for many stories a company wants to share with its constituents.
However, that doesn’t mean the company should reject blogging in favor of long form articles on the company Web site as Nielsen suggests.
Blogs can take many forms, from short bursty with lots of links, to long, more thoughtful essays. Amazingly <insert sarcastic grin here>, you can even use both styles in the same blog depending on the circumstances.
As with any communication, the company needs to identify its objectives and then select the tool that helps it achieve them.
If you want to have a conversation with your customer, consider a blog.
If you just want to talk at them, go ahead and follow Nielsen’s advice.
My money’s with, and will be spent with, the companies having conversations.
Tags: corporate blogging, blogging, Jakob Nielsen
Interesting post, Susan. Here’s an example I think will illustrate your point.
Alltech is a Kentucky-based biotech business that sells an organic form of selenium that’s used in animal feed and can also be used as a nutritional supplement for humans. (they’re NOT a client.)
Last year a team went to Africa as part of a project to provide the nutritional supplement to HIV-positive populations in South Africa and Zambia. Nutrition is a critical component to fighting AIDS.
The team was accompanied by a photographer, and the company decided to create a blog about the team’s experiences and the issue.
http://www.alltech.com/africablog/
I learned about the blog in a discussion with one of Alltech’s really sharp PR guys. So I wrote about the blog – and more importantly, the project – in my column for Business Lexington.
http://www.bizlex.com/story.php?id=135
So smart online work led to “mainstream” media coverage. Now the company uses the blog and the Business Lexington column as an internal and external marketing tool. They’ve strengthened their reputation as a compassionate global thought leader.
And they didn’t pay me a cent. I gotta figure that out… 😉
Thanks for sharing this with us David. Your story makes an important point — that journalists are using blogs as source material for stories in ways that they would never use a company Web site.
The Alltech project is also a great example of how a company can use blogs to support specific, time-delimited or time-sensitive initiatives. The blog existed to document a specific thing, ended its active phase when the trip did, but persists online to tell the story.
Well, I went to read the whole alert by Nielsen – and wow – he really likes to type, doesn’t he? So, no, he shouldn’t blog. “Writing short” is much, much harder than “writing long” – as Mark Twain so famously noted. And, if companies aren’t prepared to have real conversations, they shouldn’t even be on the web – forget about blogging. Once you’re out here, people are going to talk about you and link to you – rather you like it or not.
Further, the following statement really baffled me:
“For most sites, the content is not the point. Instead, you want to answer customers’ questions as rapidly as possible so that they’ll advance in the sales cycle and start buying (or donate, or sign up for your newsletter, or whatever else you want them to do).”
But, but, but…how are you going to answer those questions effectively without content? And, good content at that. Further, it takes a lot more than “answering questions” – you must engage with the person.
Ah well, another example of why I have a problem with so-called “experts.”
Nielsen’s recommendations are fine for some companies. For others they’re not the best advice. And I don’t think he should treat it as an either or proposition.
yikes.
no one has ever called me a “journalist” before. 😉