I don’t mean to keep hatin’ on ‘em, but it’s just such easy pickings. From AdAge, about blog coverage of American’s $15 bag PR fiasco,
Mr. Flanagan, who felt media coverage of the announcement and on some blogs was very fair, said American injected itself into conversations online only when inaccuracies were being reported. He said American hopes to have its own corporate blog operational within the next two quarters.
6 months?!?! The corporate blogging question I ask you is: are they 6 months too late or are they 3 or 4 years too late? This is one of the many reasons that you should have a corporate blog strategy NOW. It will take months/years to build a dedicated blog audience. It’s not something you can build to deal with a PR meltdown.
Chris Houchens is a marketing speaker and the author of Brand Zeitgeist. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
Chris,
Reading that article was a lesson in what ties big business in knots.
Why six months to get a blog together? Somehow, they’ve got to get it past:
“Mike Flanagan, senior VP at Weber Shandwick, American’s public-relations shop of record”;
“Al St. Germain, director-airline practice at Landor”;
“Roger Frizzell, American’s VP-corporate communications and advertising.”
Director of Airline Practice? Good grief.
Honesty, transparency, customer-centricity: they’re all just tactics when you’ve reached that level of gobbledegook. The word “ploy” comes to mind in picturing their blog. Ugh.
Thanks for picking on them again.
Regards,
Kelly
I agree with you, I even think search engines (Google in particular) have this in their algorithm now: corporate blogging – it’s easy to identify if the site has got a blog and the quality of it (post frequency, linkback authority, etc.) – so definitely, corporate blogging isn’t something to think about – it’s just a must-do!
Here’s a pretty funny video (“Flying the ‘Unfriendly’ Skies) that offers some helpful — and tasty — tips for making the most of airline cutbacks and getting around the latest luggage surcharge.
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/zane/