Blogging Perspectives Converge

Six prominent marketing professionals have gathered their thoughts on various facets of blogging: creativity, public relations, strategy, influence, conversation and advertising.

The public relations perspective – written by Dan Greenfield, who writes the Bernaisesource blog – has a great synopsis of the medium’s potential and dangers:

Blogging is everything that PR isn’t supposed to be.  Blogs are conversations between company and customer.  They are decentralized and informal, based on practices being created as we speak.  Employee bloggers have a great deal more freedom.  Their comments are not market tested and rarely reviewed beforehand by employers.  Adhere to disclosure policies and provide a disclaimer, and you are more or less on your own.  Blogging is not for the weak of heart in companies where management is uncomfortable with unpredictability, informality and transparency.  Done right, blogging can help humanize a company.  When employees ignore the rules, however, blogging can become a nightmare for the legal and HR departments.

Pete Blackshaw makes a strong case for ensuring your customer experience is consistent and that blogging is supported across the organization:

Blogging is a great way to put a fresh new face on a corporate structure, but the rest of the organization can’t be too far behind.  As corporate leaders, we need to develop the right strategies and tactics to ignite and catalyze positive change leveraging blog tools and methods while keeping the rest of the organization in tow.

The full post is here. It’s a nice convergence of opinions on blogging – and a summary of sorts that could be easily shared with management and other audiences. (Thanks to Neville Hobson for the pointer.)