Thou Shalt Not Bore Me with Corporate Blogs

I would like to make a statement that many PR people will view as apostasy: I think corporate blogs are, on the whole, a waste of time.

I would also like to make a statement that many social activists will cringe over: I love shopping at Wal-Mart.

Why do I love Wal-Mart? Simply because I am able to buy essential item at significantly lower prices. Anything from printer cartridges to aspirin to motor oil to padded envelopes to cans of sliced pineapple – I always enjoy my shopping experience at Wal-Mart.

And what do I think about the official Wal-Mart corporate blog? I have no opinion to offer because I never looked at it, nor do I have any desire to do so. This is not intended as a slur against the Wal-Mart corporate communications office, but it is plain common sense – I don’t give a flying fuck about the PR puffery of the blog. I just want to save money when I go shopping.

Let’s be frank: who’s the real audience for corporate blogs? The average consumer? Hardly! People like me are looking for quality goods at reasonable prices. Reading the blog posting of some CEO ruminating on this-and-that is of no value to folks like me.

And is the corporate blog audience is designed for the benefit of media observers? Let’s be frank, does anyone genuinely suspect the CEO is going to sit down and blithely bang out a 500-word blog post, then submit it online without anyone else seeing it first, and hope for the world is amused? Obviously, the media observer differentiates reality from fantasy, and everyone knows these postings are heavily vetted by committees of lawyers, risk managers, and other corporate officers who don’t want to see red flags flying outside of their windows. According to an article in the Connecticut Post, some insurance companies have started to build professional liability policies that cover comments made on corporate blogs.

And what about the investment community? Yeah, can you imagine the SEC giving the thumbs up for publicly-traded companies using blogs to communicate with investors?

And what about the haters? You know, the This-Company-Sucks.com crowd. They can use blogs to vent their spleen, in the feedback sections (provided one exists – if it doesn’t, then the blog is strictly a digital monologue and not an online conversation venue). But, hey, who wants to give that bunch a platform? Let them create their own blogs (which, of course, they have).

This is not to say that corporate blogs cannot be inventive. Last year, Wells Fargo created a fascinating blog highlighting the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. The bank, which is limited by regulations on what it can publicly communicate, used the blog format for historic purposes and created something that was genuinely fascinating and quite different.

Then there’s a smallish nutritional supplement company out of Ontario that I wrote an article about last year called Fusion Nutrition that has a corporate blog written by Chris Belanger, the company’s vice president of sales. That serves as more of a real blog rather than a corporate communications piece, with Belanger venting on a variety of subjects (I particularly liked his posting “Snap, Crackle, Pop” that detailed a soccer-induced broken ankle – complete with a photo of the cast-covered ankle and a none-too-happy Belanger). I must say that I enjoyed reading the blog, although it never inspired me to buy any of their products.

But beyond those examples – sorry, but I am not aware of corporate blogs being used as anything more than a poorly-disguised sales vehicle. If you know of some genuinely clever examples of the format, please share them here – I would love to learn about them and have a reason to change my negative opinion.

(Phil Hall is the former president of Open City Communications, a New York PR agency, and former editor of PR News. His latest book "The New PR" will be released later this year from Larstan Publishing.)