Do brand evangelists make us play nicer?
I've been meaning to write something on this for ages and just haven't had the time. I don't have the time now either, but just very quickly...
Due in part to Mena Trott's speech, and what people took from it, there has been some renewed discussion on civility in blogs.
It does seem to me that a lot of Bloggers are less civil on their blogs than I believe they would be in a face to face. That's the nature of the medium though isn't it?
Some will argue that it's not less civility, it's more honesty.
Irregardless (as they say on the Sopranos) what is interesting me is the role of the brand evangelist. Say someone has a beef with a product or company, and they blog about that issue - a brand evangelist will probably spot that post (through their RSS search feeds - see here) and respond to it.
Having a person representing that product or company respond to a negative blog post certainly humanises and personalises the issue.
Does this soften the bloggers approach? I guess it depends on the relationship the brand evangelist can engender with the blogger.
It worked for me. Look at my post on Ning's content agreement. Gina Bianchini responded explaining they were hoping to rectify the situation. I have received several emails from Gina explaining there have been delays and the content agreement AFAIK remains the same. But I haven't posted about it since. I'm not saying Gina has intentionally strung me along - not at all. I'm just saying the effect of her contact has been that the only follow up I did to that post was to praise Ning for being on the ball and post about the positive aspects of Ning which I wouldn't have bothered doing otherwise.
Having personal contact with companies is great, and having immediate responses to questions or issues about companies or products is great. Humanising companies is fantastic.
So what's my point? Well right now I think most brand evangelists are actually genuinely reaching out, and that includes Gina from Ning, but I worry that if things move forward the way we're heading, everybody will jump on the bandwagon and most companies will have 'brand evagelists' out there for damage control and saying whatever needs to be said to reduce negative impact and keep people on side.
Maybe I'm being too negative, but once businesses really take to this whole blog thing I think we're going to see a huge dilution of the positive aspects of blogging/response.
I guess all we can do is continue to push for honest blogging and real responses and hope I'm wrong.
Due in part to Mena Trott's speech, and what people took from it, there has been some renewed discussion on civility in blogs.
It does seem to me that a lot of Bloggers are less civil on their blogs than I believe they would be in a face to face. That's the nature of the medium though isn't it?
Some will argue that it's not less civility, it's more honesty.
Irregardless (as they say on the Sopranos) what is interesting me is the role of the brand evangelist. Say someone has a beef with a product or company, and they blog about that issue - a brand evangelist will probably spot that post (through their RSS search feeds - see here) and respond to it.
Having a person representing that product or company respond to a negative blog post certainly humanises and personalises the issue.
Does this soften the bloggers approach? I guess it depends on the relationship the brand evangelist can engender with the blogger.
It worked for me. Look at my post on Ning's content agreement. Gina Bianchini responded explaining they were hoping to rectify the situation. I have received several emails from Gina explaining there have been delays and the content agreement AFAIK remains the same. But I haven't posted about it since. I'm not saying Gina has intentionally strung me along - not at all. I'm just saying the effect of her contact has been that the only follow up I did to that post was to praise Ning for being on the ball and post about the positive aspects of Ning which I wouldn't have bothered doing otherwise.
Having personal contact with companies is great, and having immediate responses to questions or issues about companies or products is great. Humanising companies is fantastic.
So what's my point? Well right now I think most brand evangelists are actually genuinely reaching out, and that includes Gina from Ning, but I worry that if things move forward the way we're heading, everybody will jump on the bandwagon and most companies will have 'brand evagelists' out there for damage control and saying whatever needs to be said to reduce negative impact and keep people on side.
Maybe I'm being too negative, but once businesses really take to this whole blog thing I think we're going to see a huge dilution of the positive aspects of blogging/response.
I guess all we can do is continue to push for honest blogging and real responses and hope I'm wrong.
3 Comments:
I don't have a comment on the brand/PR stuff but I will say that after decades of people flaming each other online why would anyone in their right mind think that blogging would change things?
Look at some of the biggest names in the "blogosphere" (I hate that term), they are assholes to people on a regular basis. See: Winer, Dave.
I don’t know maybe Mena is living in the house of hurt feelings or something, but the internet has always been a Lord of the Flies experience.
I always felt Bif was politer on his blog than in 'real life'
hey mark... yeah, judging from the various different reports on Mena's talk it wasn't a very clear message anyway - everybody took something different from it!
However, with the Blogging A list advocating honesty and temperance, and most of the blogging community being self policed to an extent, I think there is a hope that blogging will revolutionise the communications medium and bring a fresh human and believable voice to corporations....
Emmet - yes, I've noticed that too. That's why I mostly talk to him online... :P
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