corporate blogs: the good news, and the bad news

On Saturday, I attended The Corporate Blog--Fad or PR Standard? discussion, part of the The International Conference On Fundamentals of Corporate Communication: Current Trends and Perspectives.

The good news is that I met most of my objectives, minus one, plus a few unplanned ones--if such exist:

* Adela Rogojinaru, Head of the Communication and PR Section is a nice, eloquent, and energetic lady; imagine my surprise when she hugged me, upon introducing myself.

* Talking to Sorana was great, once because it seemed that seven years didn't change us (same temperaments as back in University, also manifested by exchanging short comments when we were supposed to listen--I admit--and jumping to the same speaking opportunity), and twice because, oh, great minds think alike (many times we felt like making the same point).

* I didn't meet another Mirona, she didn't confirm and her name only got on the list because of a confusion with mine, which prompted professor AMT (Ana-Maria Teodorescu), whom I encountered with joy after the same seven years, to tell me upon meeting me: You ate my soul! Lucky enough, she referred to name tags at the conference and the confusion with the other Mirona, and not my years in university.

* I did meet Mihai Dinu after the discussion, who kissed me lightly on the cheeks, to which I smiled: Have I disappointed you today, professor? Terribly, he said. I countered: I could only live up to the image you formed of me in university. There was once a first oral exam where he was so upset to give me a 9 instead of a 10 that it was the last time I didn't study his courses thoroughly.

What didn't happen either was my presentation. When I realised that 9 people in the panel plus 1 over Skype only had two hours to tackle corporate blogging, I asked Ionut, who also had a presentation, whether he minded if we skipped presenting. All these people needed better use of the limited time slot to take turns speaking.

The bad news is not very surprising, yet in no way constructive: bloggers who were also PR professionals had a very different vision on corporate blogging than bloggers who were also business people, and the debate was polarized between the two camps.

* PR people cared for and understood communication targeted to audiences, whereas the other bloggers expected a corporate blog to be either a. sexy enough for mainstream/ all possible readers or b. written by PR people instead of the CEO, thus bad/ dull, because we all know that PR people can't blog (!).

* Consequently, the overall perception of PR in Romania keeps being negative--the job is about wizardry, and manipulation.

I've published my presentation [PDF, 230 KB], as promised. I hope you will take the time to go through the few slides and see whether I managed to keep some balance between my schizophrenic PR and blogger sides. Comments are more than appreciated.

In the end, the other speakers have been:

* Bogdan Gavrila - Journalist, Manager Core Target
* Vladimir Oane - CEO Metromind [RO]
* Ionut Oprea [RO] - Mediapro Interactiv
* Sorana Savu - Manager Premium Communication
* Bobby Voicu [RO] - Blogger
* Alina Stefan - Blogger, The Romanian Commodities Exchange [RO]
* Ron Edwards - Ambient Connections/ Ambient Performance, UK

Some of them published their conclusions, as well: Alina [RO], Bobby [RO], Ron.

The event was endorsed by British Council, which also brought the moderators--Radu Iliescu, British Council and Frank Martin Hein, Executive Communication Services [DE]. Organisers: The Faculty of Letters, Communication and Public Relations Section and the Faculty of Sociology and Social Assistance, Centre for Media Studies and New Communication Technologies in Bucharest. One positive outcome may be British Council organising more such debates in the future.

Frank Hein had quite a controversial question: will (internal) corporate blogs replace e-mail in the close future? I didn't have the space to express all my view points during the debate, so here's my answer--probably no, because:

* It's the old difference between offline and online media consumption, all over again. Offline media (e.g. newspapers) comes to you, while you have to go to the Internet (e.g. websites). Likewise, e-mail comes to you, while you'd have to go the corporate blog (just another type of website) unless RSS feeds are largely embraced.

* By that time, wikis may have replaced blogs, especially for team work, or either may have morphed into something new/ better. It's not a good moment to assess which technologies will live, and a good argument is the high adoption of Twitter, an application with the main barrier seemingly identical to its main feature--SMS (old technology) distribution.

* I'd rather manage my e-mails, with filters and such, and have an e-mail client connected to other online tools--contacts, calendar, documents--than manage my input into several team blogs and not see the big picture anywhere.

Previously, I expressed some of my views on corporate blogging as invited by Manafu*, who launched the subject initially by asking whether we do PR on blogs [RO]. You can also check my first reply [RO] in the comments of his post. I wrote about it on my blog back then, too.