Ways Businesses Screw Up With Blog
Social Signal’s Rob Cottingham put up a terrific blog post in February that you should go look at if you missed it. Titled Nine (or ten) ways to stumble in social media,” the post is absolutely required reading for businesses who are already involving themselves in the blogophere, or those who are considering it.
Actually, come to think of it, I suppose it’s a great article for those who have chosen NOT to get involved, in order to be able to explain their decision—not that I think any reasonably sized company can afford to ignore blogs today.
Here’s just one of the examples Rob features:
Playing coy: Outright dishonesty isn’t the only thing that can trip you up. Wal-Marting Across America was a blog by a middle-aged couple driving their RV across the U.S., camping overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots and telling stories about the wonderful people they met - a remarkable number of whom had glowing things to say about Wal-Mart. None of this was untrue; the couple was genuine, the RV was an RV, and nobody’s disputing the stories people were telling. But what the blog didn’t mention - anywhere - is that the whole thing was paid for by Wal-Mart itself: from airfares to the RV itself. The blog was outed, the story hit the mainstream media, and both Wal-Mart and their PR firm, Edelman, were left looking very much like they’d tried to pull something sleazy.
My quick rule of thumb: disclose everything, even if you don’t think it’s important, and if you ever used the phrase “we’ll just make them think...” when describing what you’re doing—don’t.
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