How to tackle blogger critics

Companies are being advised to use in-house bloggers to appease their online detractors.

Edelman, a global PR firm, has news for firms worried about their brands. A recent Technorati survey of more than 821 bloggers suggested they had “a tremendous desire” to be accurate in what they write, says Edelman chief executive Richard Edelman. Very few, it seems, will leave a factual error up on the web – especially if companies write to correct the offending passage by means of a polite email.

So if you’re worried about bloggers beating up your corporate brand, Edelman’s advice is: don’t post a nasty comment on your critic’s blog. Just write, personally; better still, send a freebie. After all, most companies don’t bother to get in touch with bloggers at all.

Edelman’s advice makes sense, given how often bloggers take companies to task. It also makes sense because, Edelman says, bloggers don’t see multinationals as very trustworthy, but don’t see them as very untrustworthy either.

Who should corporations get to write to their blogger critics? While at Microsoft, “geek-blogger” Robert Scoble gave his employer credibility. So, Edelman says, get an in-house blogger to do the job.

In a commentary on the Edelman doctrine, blogging consultant Suw Charman warns that bloggers who are “evangelists” for your brand may be trickier to handle than critics. Supplying them with corporate communications or freebies, she says, may make them feel they’re losing their independence.

For corporate brands, the challenge with blogs is, as Charman says, more cultural than technological or financial. It is to understand that PR, and branding, is about holding a conversation.

Brand boosters have long believed this. All that blogs have done since 2000, it appears, is underline both to firms and opponents of globalisation the merits of two-way relationships.

There’s much that IT chiefs could do in the blogosphere. Charles Preslik, UK companies editor at the Financial Times, notes that there are plenty of tech blogs in the UK, but professes himself “really disappointed” by British business blogs, finding hardly any beyond one on sheet roofing.

There is a big opportunity for blog-savvy firms prepared publicly to confess their crimes and misdemeanours. But me, I find the relations between blogger critics and blogging corporations far too cosy. Bloggers see themselves as whistle-blowers unmasking multinationals who make their money by duping ” unaware” consumers.

Meanwhile, multinationals will soon rush to indulge bloggers in the name of corporate social responsibility.

The blogger as gadfly challenges the corporation too little. When firms give serious, detailed, official and public accounts of their medium- and long-term strategies for innovation, we will finally be getting somewhere.

Perhaps Scoble’s successor would like to start us all off by explaining Microsoft’s hoard of $40bn in uninvested cash.