How to tell if your blog is real

February 10, 2009 | Written by

Yesterday, my colleagues and I met with executives from a global corporation to discuss PR opportunities. The meeting went something like this:

Just kidding. But the meeting did include a senior marketer, who had the following to say on new media:

CMO: "I saw blogs and wikis on one of your slides. I hate blogs and wikis. Those are two things that should never appear in a presentation. Never."

Me: "But what about blogs at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal?"

CMO: "Those aren’t real blogs."

And so it went.

My natural nerdy blog defenses were primed, but I’ve since realized that the concept of a "blog" all depends on your perspective.

At Ruder Finn, we sometimes look at digital communications as existing on a spectrum ranging from "structured" to "unstructured" (to borrow a phrase from HP).

Take the Wall Street Journal blog The Juggle as an example. This would fall more towards the "structured" end of the spectrum. It is owned, edited and written by the Wall Street Journal and its journalists, and the posts are often (if not always) based on stories from the proper paper.

But The Juggle is still a blog. Its tone, content, scope, frequency, depth and length often differ substatially from the paper. Most importantly, its posts often garner hundreds of comments and spark watercooler conversations at Ruder Finn.

Then there are blogs that are slightly less structured. Individual bloggers with track records and credibility, mainstream blogs written by syndicated columnists, book blogs, internal blogs, mom blogs, and corporate blogs (oh my!).

What I think our CMO friend meant by "real" blogs are "pajama blogs." These fall more at the "unstructured" end of the spectrum. They are blogs written as diaries by people who have no training, are uncompensated, and independent. They can be unpredictable, opinionated, and influential. Sometimes they are even more influential than mainstream media when they act as grassroots / word of mouth sources of information.

This is probably the more difficult audience to target with corporate messaging, especially corporate messaging that has been carefully cultivated and protected over many years. However, it’s do-able and quite effective if done right.

So I guess this makes Left Brain semi-real. Which is good because as Groucho Marx once said: "I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal."

More from RFI Studios

• Is your CEO a bo ke? – Left Brain
• How Important is Offline to Digital PR? – Left Brain
• How to look at gender online (SFW) – Left Brain
• So Why Do Corporations Want to Blog? – Left Brain
• iJournalists Are Coming (Real Ones) – Left Brain