The McDonnell Group

By Marc Marton

ATLANTA -Dec. 14, 2010 - Back in the early 1990s, before anyone other than government or university employees had an idea of what the World Wide Web was or, what it could be, I remember listening to a very smart business unit head at my employer who made very thoughtful, compelling observations about a variety of issues that mattered to his customers in one flowing stream of consciousness.  I said to him, “Why don’t you post a regular op-ed on the company website that we can market to key publics?”

Nothing ever came of my idea.  Trade and technical magazines still ruled the B2B world.  Explosion of the web was still years away, but the publishing industry had already begun its downward slide.

Consolidation and declining advertising resulted in fewer titles with fewer pages and few opportunities for companies to tell their stories.  For so long, these engineering journals were the conduit between vendors and customers.  In B2B, the trade pubs also meant the Bread and Butter for PR practitioners serving the widget makers who supplied the country’s machine builders and manufacturers.  While the digital world made parts of our jobs easier, the disappearance of print made a significant part of our jobs – “hits” - much harder. Less than a year after my online posting idea, the Drudge Report broke the infamous Whitehouse intern story.  A lot of these online sites were building audiences as news aggregator, but this scandal certainly brought blogs into the public consciousness.

If you’re a company in the smart grid space, you may be aware of the prominent blogs covering you.  Sites like TechCrunch, GigaOm’s Earth2Tech, VentureBeat and Grist employ professional journalists and are in the top 100 blogs among all the online general interest and political sites.  We’re seeing new media emerge as an information source on par with mainstream media.  Just think back to Sept. 2010 when CBS News’ 60 Minutes profiled Bloom Energy’s “Bloom Box” fuel cell.  Michael Kanellos of technology blog Greentech Media was one of the featured media interviews providing analysis.

For better or worse, blogs and social media have removed barriers that may have been in place in the mainstream media for promoting a business.  But even with virtually unlimited space, the elevated status of some bloggers allows them to be as selective as print publications.

But of course, you can always get around this by blogging yourself.  The only thing stopping a company from joining online discussions or monitoring what’s being said about them online is commitment.  Organizations have at least one person with a point of view that has some value or can at least start a dialog.  These people need to budget some time every week to either write something or record it for transcription before posting.  No time to write it down?  Digital recorders make podcasts or videos extremely simple to post.

Time blogging is time well spent, as solid content will help an audience find you.  Do it right and even the journalists whose attention you seek will get your point of view as it suits them.  Good blogs build credibility and create a readership of devotees.  At the very least, it will help an organization connect with its own employees.  An added bonus of frequent content updating is some built-in search engine benefits, leading more traffic to your corporate website.

The last five years have seen blogging, along with other social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, become a core component of conventional integrated marketing programs.  The McDonnell Group’s Smart Grid Executive Forum on LinkedIn, for example, has become a destination for over 2000 members who engage in lively discussions about technology, regulatory and legislative issues involving the utility and energy industries.

There are plenty of good examples of effective corporate blogs, including Cisco, Oracle and Xerox.  These larger organizations will likely have staff to manage the blog but they serve as good references nonetheless.  If your organization isn’t ready to manage its own site, a good strategy for wading in is to follow other influential bloggers and regularly post comments or observations.

Will print ever reverse its twenty-year slide and enjoy a renaissance in the future as people decide technology has gone too far or become too burdensome? Or will the iPhone and iPad become the standard platform for consuming the written word?  Trends point to the latter, with a lot more of the content behind pay walls.

Whichever way it goes, just being a part of the conversation will always matter.  If you think you know your audience now, you’ll likely know them better through social media.