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Corporate Blogs as E-CRM Tools – Building Consumer Engagement through Content Management

Page history last edited by Griffin Davis 9 years, 4 months ago

 

Research Report:Corporate Blogs as E-CRM Tools – Building Consumer Engagement through Content Management

 By [Griffin Davis, [McSwift: Marketing Analysis of Franchise vs Artist 

 

  1. Abstract. 

This journal article explains why company blogs are important tools. The author explores how companies are able to build more personal relationships with their consumers by communicating their brand through the content of their blog. Then, they encourage consumer participation and involvement through feedback in the comments section. This way, the consumer not only has a more personal understanding of the brand and product, but is also able to engage with the company and feel that their voice is represented in the brand or product. 

 

2. Description

 

The author explains that the company blog is a solution to the new phenomenon that he calls “exploratory consumer browsing”. In broadest terms, he is discussing how companies must adapt their advertising to the age of the Internet. Since the user is now in control and “exploring” on the Internet, rather than just solely consuming as one would through a medium such as television, the company must “aid a consumer’s quest for information”(Vanjana) rather than simply spoon-feed information to them. He also recognizes that Web 2.0 interfaces such as the blog involve the opportunity (and therefore, the necessity) to create social systems between organizations and consumers, as they allow for the collaborative creation of web pages through both conversational posting and commenting.

 

With social systems in place, the marketing approach obviously needs to be much more individualized, which is why companies’ blogs take on such a personal nature and offer more ways for the consumer to create a unique relationship with the company: “Organizational blogs seem to appear at the intersection of personal reflection and professional communication…An effective blog fosters community and conversation, drives traffic to the product website, and serves as a medium for interaction with the consumers, thereby shaping consumer perception, eliciting responses, and through a two way thought exchange process, aids in fostering a connection with the consumers” (Vanjana).  According to Vanjana, a proper blog should produce or host the appropriate content that will stimulate the maximum amount of highly involved relationships between the organization and consumers. By creating this dynamic, the corporation shows desire to engage in a conversation instead of a monologue. And this allows them to break down the barrier of “perceived indifference” that the consumer often feels when dealing with a corporation that seems so massive that it might not feel human (Vanjana). Vanjana then reinforces that the reactionary posts not only help to create feelings of trust for the brand in the customer, but comments can also prove useful to organizations in that they can be mined for information that will aid the company in gaining data about consumers and forming further marketing strategy.

 

Vanjana breaks his understanding of blogs down into three catergories; “Corporate blogging is primarily about three attributes – information, relationships, and knowledge management”. These things will show themselves in that very order if an organization forms their blog properly. First, they post information about their organization and products, then they create relationships with the consumers through relational posts in which they gain information about the consumers through the comment sections and responding posts, then they manage the knowledge that they have gained through feedback by analyzing it and putting it to use.

 

Vanjana also conducted research to discover the breadth of posts an organization made and the types of reactions they warranted by collecting information from 100 blog posts across 10 Fortune 500 blogs. The research indicated that there were 27 different types of posts, which were then grouped into 4 categories: Organizational, Promotional, Relational, and General posts. Vanjana then found the correlation between the specific types of posts of how many as well as what kind of reactions they facilitated. He was able to conclude that, “A significant correlation between number of posts and number of comments indicates that the volume of the organizational efforts can stimulate consumer engagement as represented by the volume of comments on the blogs”(Vanjana) meaning that there was a connection between the number of posts and the number of comments returned. He also found that consumers responded with a higher degree of engagement to relational posts, commenting or posting in more detail, or even better, networking their friends and family to check out the blog. Thus, he was able to imply that “Content that is relevant to the consumer in terms of striking an emotional chord with the consumer attracts more visitors and comments. Hence, although it is important to host organization-specific content in terms of organizational projects, endeavors and achievements, which is a mere statement of fact, it is the Relational content that finds greater favour with the consumer.”(Vanjana). Vanjana’s research tells us that while organizational posts are an important part of the structure and information content of the blog, it is the relational content that helps the most to build healthy relationships with loyal consumers.

 

3. Commentary.  

 This article can relate to the project McSwift: Marketing Analysis of Franchise vs Artist because it deals with how companies interact with consumers over the Internet. While the group is not dealing with blogs specifically, it is operating within the same category of how organizations relate to their consumers; however, the focus in the project is placed on communication through advertising rather than through organizational blogs. The group is also placing a focus on how social media, mainly Twitter, is used to present information to consumers as well as to harvest information from consumers. Twitter has also been referred to microblogging, so everything that is being said about blogs could be reformatted to talk about the incredibly small-scale blog that is a company's twitter page. Also, the sentiments about how organizations attach value to their brand (known as brand communication) and the customer relationship management models that Vanjana discussed organizations using blogs to maintain are valuable tools to help understand how advertisers reach out to consumers. This article should provide more professional language for the group to use as well as insight into the intentions and strategies of the advertisers and organizations themselves.

 

4. Resources for Further Study.  

 

Kelleher, T. and Miller, B.M. (2006) Organizational blogs and the human voice:Corporate blog strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 11(2), Article number 1.

 

Kolari, P. et al (2007) On the structure, properties and utility of internal corporate blogs. Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, USA, http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/ paper/html/id/343/On-the-Structure-Properties- and- Utility-of-Internal-Corporate-Blogs, accessed 24 November 2014.

 

McKinsey Quarterly. (2007) How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey global       survey. McKinsey Quarterly, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/How_businesses_are_using_Web_ 20_A_McKinsey_Global_Survey_1913_abstract, 24 November 2014

 

Schultz, D. (2000) Customer/brand loyalty in an interactive marketplace. Journal of Advertising Research 40(3): 41–53.  

 

 

            

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