Where Are the Corporate Bloggers When A Crisis Comes A’Knockin’?

In Chapter 13 of Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, the authors discuss the power of blogging in a crisis. On page 198, they state, “Blogs enable businesses to jump in quickly and effectively control, reduce, or eliminate damage”.

As a budding crisis communications specialist, I completely agree with that sentiment. When a company is facing a financial meltdown, a scandal, a strike, financial turmoil, product defect, etc., I believe its customers want to hear the unfiltered truth from the inside, barring leaking confidential or proprietary information. Blogging from the inside should be part and parcel of traditional communication methods.

The marketing and PR departments should put out the obligatory press releases, hold press conferences, update the company websites, and their spokespeople should speak regularly with the media. Blogging should come from different departments of the company. I would want and expect to hear stories about what’s going on at the company to give it more of a human face.

Israel and Scoble wrote Naked Conversations in 2005, and I wondered if when faced with a national crisis, would companies use the blogosphere to their advantage? So, I did a simple Google search of some of the companies that Scoble and Israel mentioned to determine if any of them had been embroiled in a crisis lately. I wondered if I could find any blogs written by employees at those companies to get their take on it.

In my search, I stumbled uponPaul Gillin’s blog titled “Social Media and the Open Enterprise”. On October 2, 2008, Paul wrote an excellent blog entry called, “Corporate Blogs Blather While Markets Tumble”.

Gillin visited several Fortune 500 company blogs for signs of any discussion about the financial crisis that has gripped our nation. Two of the company blogs that Gillin visited were discussed in Scoble and Israel’s “Naked Conversations”: Boeing and General Motors.

When Scoble and Israel wrote their book 3 years ago, they mentioned Randy Baseler’s GM blog called Randy’s Journal. In 2005, Scoble and Israel described Randy’s Journal as “an example of a blog that emulates a corporate brochure, and it’s actually pretty good as a brochure” (p. 163). Well, Randy’s Journal is now being written by Randy Tinseth (weird coincidence that they are both named Randy). Boeing is in the middle of its third strike by machinists in within the last 15 years and I could only find one short blog entry dated September 11, 2008 about the strike. As someone who does not work in the aircraft industry, that blog post did not give me any insight into the feelings of the employees on the inside.

On the other hand, in Naked Conversations, Scoble and Israel had great praise for Bob Lutz’s GM blog Fast Lane. Lutz regularly talks about the crises facing the American automotive industry. Congress may need to offer loans to automakers to help them meet fuel mandates and Lutz blogged about it extensively on September 29,2008.

Like Scoble and Israel, I do see the value and importance of company blogs especially during times of crisis. It makes me feel that they not only care about their customers and the public’s perception, they recognize that the return on investment of engaging the blogosphere is worth more than money. If you give the blogosphere what it wants, constant and honest two-way communication, the blogosphere will be there when you need it.