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Organisations face a flogging if they're not blogging

Corporations that don't blog are likely to face a consumer backlash for being uncaring or uninterested in what their customers think and feel.

To avoid being passed over for a blogging competitor, organisations should overcome their fear of public criticism and engage in online conversations with customers through weblogs or 'blogs', says Queensland Institute of Technology's interaction design researcher Joanne Jacobs.

"Customers can end up loving them for owning up to stuff-ups and faults," Ms Jacobs said.

She is co-editor with QUT Media and Communication lecturer Dr Axel Bruns of Uses of Blogs, a newly released book that discusses ways blogs are used for news, political commentary, marketing, corporate criticism, fiction, and education.

"Organisations must risk their carefully crafted images and enter this new era of transparency because consumers are demanding they use interactive technology to converse with them," Ms Jacobs said.

"Organisations that fail to use interactive tools look as if they don't care about their customers."

She said blogging was now a mainstream communication tool for people under 35 with 45 million blogs on the net, a number that was growing exponentially.

From a marketing point of view, blogs were a mechanism for communicating with the market in a human way, instead of using press releases.

"Organisations are realising that a mass market that passively accepts ideas no longer exists and that markets are now conversations," Ms Jacobs said.

"Consumers no longer trust one-way information put out by companies. They don't believe PR rhetoric.

"What they do trust is information from each other - we all prefer to use goods and services recommended by our peers - and this is one of the reasons for the popularity of blogs.

Ms Jacobs said the ramifications were huge for media because they were losing advertising dollars to consumer-driven content channels such as blogs.

"By 2010, 13 per cent of advertising will be spent on online channels."

Ms Jacobs said the business advantages of blogging included sharing information, research into customers' interests, and the ability to "attract eyeballs to your website".

"The Guardian newspaper found that after it started its blog, sales of the actual newspaper went up."

She warned blogging was not just another publishing channel: "You can't do it as spin doctoring; it must be correct, honest and sensitive or the audience will lose confidence."

-QUT