Company bloggers can help put out fires: “This is what blogs are about. Everything has changed. We have to be transparent and honest. People are talking about this, they’re posting these images, we can’t ignore it. We have to deal with it directly.” That is a quote from the article by Lionel Menchaca who is Dell’s chief blogger. I could not agree more. Openness and transparency are the name of the game in corporate PR and will only be rewarded with accolades and public forgiveness. Though this is a somewhat jaded view of the world looking through rose colored glasses, I believe that blogs can be a fantastic vehicle for corporations to listen to their target audience and get their candid message across. There are lots of interesting examples in that article.
Check out “The Cluetrian Manifesto”. It predates the format of blogs and YouTube, but was prophetic in its assessment of the business voice and the rise of “corporate bloggers” and other personalization of PR.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that my friend and co-blogger Brian is quoted at length in that text.
“‘It costs, what, $200 for a single-seat copy of WordPress?'”
Not very good press for WordPress, that.