Bloggers and Corporate Communications
Over the past few days, I have had this idea percolating through my mind about how bloggers fit into “corporate communications,” i.e. official, blessed messaging. Part of that is because an internal person had asked for an official response to something I had blogged about, specifically the S60 Trojan Horse that was recently reported. Of course, he didn’t know I wrote something, and it most certainly didn’t come from our Corporate Communications department. But he liked my response all the same.
The incident got me thinking. At what point do bloggers essentially become the corporate communications department for companies? Certainly the Web 2.0 startups seem to be using blogs as the corporate communications channel. You might see the occasional press release, but the blog is where companies are announcing things.
I believe the S60 blogs is one way for Nokia to sort of “experiment” with this idea. Those of us blogging there have been given some basic guidelines about things we can and can’t talk about (for example, we can’t about unannounced products or other trade secrets), but there are no hard “rules.” Certainly none of us are being told what to say, either.
I think the major difference between messages from bloggers and messages from corporate communication types is that blogging feels a lot more personal. The messages are not necessarily sanitized for your protection. But I think the bloggers have two things that many corporate communications types may not have–passion and the freedom to express it.
I’m kind of torn on this myself. I think both kinds of messages have their place, and I think it’s safe to say that blogging will become part of the overall corporate communications strategy. What do you think about this? Should the inmates (bloggers) be in charge of the asylum (corporate communications)? Post your thoughts in the comments.
