Why Revealing Content and Comments Shouldn’t Worry Business Bloggers
Are Business Blogs Too Revealing?
Your business skills won’t desert you when you start a business blog. Most business leaders I know fancy themselves as quite astute. Most of them are right. If your firm is putting out high quality sales collateral, public relations stories, and a strong website, those communication skills will carry over into social media. You will choose your blog topics judiciously. You will know how much information is too much and what boundaries not to cross. You will retain control over what comments to publish. You will not be reduced to ashes.
Unless perhaps you’re in the media business, new media doesn’t put companies out of business, it makes them stronger. I remember when fax machines came around, and can’t think of a single company faxing rendered obsolete. Cellular phones didn’t destroy any firms that I’m aware of. And websites didn’t put any companies out of business – except those that didn’t have one.
Competitors are more worried about their problems than your opportunities. Most companies have the same complaint – we spend too much time internally focused and not enough time with customers. Is that true of your firm? If so, why should your competitors be any different? If not – kudos, you are the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, if a competitor has any time left over after putting out fires and rehashing their Strategic Plan for the umpteenth time, they’re going to spend their “outside the box” time with customers, not scouring your business blog.
There are better ways to get information about you than reading your business blog. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that a competitor will take the time to carefully follow your blog and comb through comments for clients to steal. If that’s what’s happening, you should breathe a sigh of relief. The competitor could be doing a lot of other things that would be far more effective in undermining you and stealing your business.
Blog posts and comments, at their best, are genuine and informative. But they don’t reveal the back story. They are no substitute for actually talking to people. If I wanted to collect intelligence on a competitor, I’d talk to suppliers, customers, disgruntled former employees, disgruntled former customers, and perhaps, if I were daring, current employees. That’s the way to do it, but I probably wouldn’t do it, because I need to focus on building my own business up, not bringing down somebody else’s.
But a competitor could identify a customer by reading our blog comments, you say? Sure, maybe. But first, if your competitor is any good, he knows who your customers are already. If he’s not any good, why do you care what he knows? Second, if a customer is inspired to say something good or bad about your firm, he can say it on your blog, or on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Yelp or a competitor’s blog. Why not encourage the customer to speak on your home turf, where you be sure to see it and respond quickly? Third, in my experience, the vast majority of customers are not going to use your blog as the first line of communication for resolving a problem or expressing dissatisfaction. If you see that happening, your blog may be telling you that your firm has serious issues in customer service or sales.
Having information and doing something with it are two different things. Granted, there are competitors out there who love to collect information. I personally have more than 1000 web pages bookmarked – and I’ve acted on perhaps 10. Collecting data is easy, but acting on it requires time, energy, and the ability to formulate a plan. Once again, if I have that kind of time, energy, and ability, I will focus it in a more productive (i.e., self serving) way. If I’m smart. If I’m dumb, you don’t care what I do.
The best example of the uselessness of readily available information comes from my own field, SEO (search engine optimization). Anybody with a web browser can see the code for any given web page simply by clicking on “View Page Source”. If you want to know how to program your site, or how not to, it’s all laid out for you. You’d think everyone would have caught on by now, after a couple decades. But the reality is, the vast majority of websites are poorly optimized, fully ignoring best practices. Sure, there are many reasons for this phenomenon, but a lack of information is not one of them.
Similarly, how many stories have you heard about companies being undone by their business blogs? I’ve heard … zero. On the other hand, stories abound of companies using business blogs to attract customers, strengthen customer relationships, increase brand awareness, enhance customer service, and open doors to exciting new collaborations.
Fear is a great motivator. David Meerman Scott, in his book World Wide Rave, observes that many companies are frozen by their fear of new media.
In an online seminar he gave on June 24, he further noted that these same executives who tremble at the thought of hosting a business blog themselves use Google and business blogs extensively to find new products, services and opportunities – just like the rest of us.
I’m not sure Scott has asked them, but I doubt very much these executives are using Google and blogs to poach accounts and disrupt competitor operations – just like the rest of us.
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Brad, I agree with you. Your competitors already know about you and having a blog will not sink your ship. If more companies got over themselves and started focusing more on the market and less on the competition we would begin to see true differentiation and excellence.
Karen, Well said! You just shortened my post by about 600 words.
This is a challenging question. I guess for me a critical issue is whether I can strengthen my relationship with customers (and potential customers) enough in the public forum to offset the competitive risk that may result. My feeling is that the open discussion will work quite well and even though competitors may try to sell against you (in secret), competitive claims might be more openly discussed in ways that clear the air and show your true advantages. You can take talks about secret ingredients or protocols off-line as appropriate, but still make the point of their existence in public. Where this might not be an advantage is when your products simply don’t stack up against the competition.
Hi Fred, Your calculations certainly make sense, but we can take a blog a step further and appeal to potential as well as existing customers. Blogging can bring you to the attention of many people who are unlikely to find you via your standard website.
I definitely agree with what you are saying here, those that take a chance on a variety of marketing techniques are much more likely to succeed than those that shy away from them, at least they are trying!
There are so many ways that competitors can access information about other businesses that a blog is minor in comparison.
Overall i think that blogging can be beneficial to a business if you are honest, I have heard of one occasion when it has been a bad move and that was when a particular business fabricated the content of their blog.
Hi Danielle, It’s true that blogging can backfire with fabricated content, or by being too self serving. Those are easy flaws to avoid, though.
Brad,
Apart from that of competitors stealing secrets, which you have more than adequately addressed in your discussion above, I would imagine that another fear, for companies of a significant size, would be that some off handed comment may provide ammunition for plaintiff lawyers in the event of legal action, which I would have thought could be a real prospect in the blogosphere given that the frequency with which blog posts are written and the need to provide responses to reader comments in a timely fashion.
I am curious, apart from the obvious – exercising a degree of common sense during the process of preparing blog discussions – are there any particular steps which you could suggest for companies in terms of avoiding adverse legal consequences of any offhand comments which are made by company staff during the course of their interaction with the general public in the blogosphere?
Hi Andrew, You raise an important point. Companies should take several steps to avoid accidental or careless statements. First, consult with an attorney specializing in internet law to gain an understanding of what to avoid, how to handle/edit comments, how to attribute references to trademarks, etc. Second, make sure all contributing authors are coached in the legalities. Third, craft a statement or blog post explaining blog content and comment policies/guidelines. Fourth, if necessary, have posts edited before publication. Tying up bloggers with red tape has disadvantages, so common sense should prevail. Certain types of businesses have more exposure than others.
Hi Brad
When I speak about social networking generally I am often asked if having an online presence gives competitors easy access to inside knowledge of your business. My response is that what you broadcast is under your control and you should always have the ability to moderate comments before they are generally published. I will support this with the advice in this excellent post in future.
In addition – as an independent consultant – I have had the opportunity to collaborate with someone in the same business sector because by reading my blog they saw how we could partner…
Jackie, Your experience is a good example of the pros outweighing the cons of engaging in social media. I’ve heard many stories like yours and I’m grateful my post can help you open up similar opportunities for new clients.
Hi Brad – This is so true – fear that your competitors are spying on you, is no reason not to have a business blog.
I did have one competitor who got a bit obsessed with my blog and I was a bit concerned at first. But in reality, they were a much bigger company than mine – they just didn’t realise that initially. And once they did, they actually began passing us work they couldn’t do. If it wasn’t for our business blog they probably wouldn’t have realised we existed.
Cath, What a great story! We are conditioned to think of others in our niche as competitors, though often they can be collaborators.
@ Brad – I agree that the blog can bring in new folks and probably hook them better than most cold calling now a-days. I think it’s the right attitude, it’s just a tough sell.
@ Cath – That’s a story I’m going to pass along.
Brad,
The steps to which you refer (in your above response to my comment) sound like a great deal of common sense to me, and I would certainly have thought that in the case of organizations for which legal action represents a significant risk factor, the practice of consulting a suitably qualified attorney to provide professional advice should be considered an essential step prior to the launch of a business blog or any other form of communication channel within the social media environment.