It’s the Strategy, Stupid

CyberAlert has just released its latest issue of Media Monitoring News that includes an article on “Planning a Successful Business Blog.” Below are the tips, each of which is described in more detail in the article.

• Tip #1: Pick Your Subject
• Tip #2: Define Your Mission
• Tip #3: Identify Your Target Audience
• Tip #4: Survey the Landscape
• Tip #5: Recruit Your Blogger(s)
• Tip #6: Refine Your Subject/Mission and Differentiate Your Blog
• Tip #7: Recruit a Champion
• Tip #8: Pull the Plug or Start Implementation

Hmmm. Sounds like the steps we take for most of our PR projects. Success depends on many things, not the least of which is how strategic we are from the outset. Although a unique and vital point under Tip #5 is that “Almost by definition, individuals write blogs – not companies.”

Most Big Companies Are Ignoring the Blogosphere
At the end of the article are links to several other articles on business blogs and samples of good business blogs. One of the articles, “The Inside Story on Company Blogs” (from Business Week, Feb. 2006) states that only 22 of the 500 largest U.S. companies operate public blogs from their “executive suites.”

Another article, “Why there’s no escaping the blog” from Fortune states: “The blog--short for weblog--can indeed be, as Scoble and Gates say, fabulous for relationships. But it can also be much more: a company’s worst PR nightmare, its best chance to talk with new and old customers, an ideal way to send out information, and the hardest way to control it. Blogs are challenging the media and changing how people in advertising, marketing, and public relations do their jobs. A few companies like Microsoft are finding ways to work with the blogging world--even as they're getting hammered by it. So far, most others are simply ignoring it.”

I’d be curious to see how many San Antonio companies are still ignoring it.

More Tips
By the way, a second article provided by Cyber Alert focuses on “Implementing a Successful Business Blog” with the steps of “selecting development tools, working out a content plan for launch making a debut, developing a style and personality, handling responses, monitoring consumer discussion on your subject, and enjoying the process.”