Just as when the nerds or your parents start to adopt a fashion trend it’s no longer cool, so it follows that once companies start blogging, it’s no longer cool. Companies ruin a lot of things. Blogging and social media is on the top of the list.
For two years, I ran a law firm’s social media accounts as well as wrote blogs. A blog from a law firm or a tweet from a law firm is about as cool as it sounds. (In this post, I blend blogging/social media because I think Miller and Shepherd’s analysis reveals some truths about many yet-to-emerge social media platforms)
The genre of our blog posts were almost identical to our press release format. The difference between whether we wrote a blog or a press release depended on the content. Most notably, did we think ANY of our media relations would be remotely interested in the “story” we had to tell? If yes, we sent them a press release. If not, we wrote a blog about it and posted it on our website.
Most of the time, the blogs I wrote were “So-and-So spoke at this event. The event happened three weeks ago but the attorney complained that we didn’t post about it so write a blog or something.” Or So-and-So won an award but it wasn’t covered in the Indy Star so they want us to publicize it.” Sensing a trend? More often than not, our blogs were a last-ditch effort to show attorneys we were doing something about a particular thing they cared about, but we as marketing professionals knew no one else would.
When companies create their own format for a genre, it can lead to the degradation of that genre. Writing a blog for the sake of writing a blog is not a good enough reason to do so.
Miller and Shepherd’s “Blogging as Social Action,” though in need of an update as the genre of blogs has evolved, still rings true regarding the need to pair content with personality.
Think of the companies that have succeeded in creating blogs or social media accounts that people actually follow?
Wendy’s is the first that comes to mind. Wendy’s rejects corporate America’s largely sweeping decision to play it safe and not offend anyone. Wendy’s has a personality of making fun of people, joking about other fast food chains. They have personality, a point of view.
Brynn,
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting take and you make a lot of great points here. I think often times that's why social media platforms are coming out as the next new thing. When Facebook got too crowded, Instagram and Twitter emerged. Then Reddit. Now TikTok. I believe even Reddit got too crowded for some and now they have branched off with Ruckus.
It's almost as though once corporations become overly involved on a platform, that si part of why people want to leave and find something new.It's certainly not the only reason, but it definitely adds fuel to the fire I would say.
This was a good read, Brynn. I think it reminded me that blogging or social media can be quite complex in both its purpose and its reception. I really had not spent much time thinking about this from a "business" perspective as my mind generally navigates to individuals, not groups (even sports teams feel singular to me).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of sports teams, there are several very interaction and compelling sports teams Twitter feeds out there. Some are pretty low key and just link you away to something or promote a various good cause, but some interact more than others. The Cubs feed has been known to do this, but they have an enormous fan base too, which I think matters.
Brynn,
ReplyDeleteYou made great points in this post. With a marketing background myself, I've had to run numerous blogs that I knew audiences were not going to read. At the greenhouse/landscaping business I interned for, these were informative. At the parks and recreation department I worked for, they read more like press releases or brief stories. They took all of this time to develop a "unique voice" in these blogs, when our generation isn't going to spend the time reading them anyway. I can't remember the last time I actually kept up with a blog.
I think our generation is looking for information they can consume quickly. That's why Twitter has become so popular with most of us. Blogs tend to be too long. Even with SEO, they aren't even close to the length of the tweets, Instagram captions, etc. that we consume on a daily basis.