GM’s blog is call Fastlane, where there is one moderator that controls the blog. In the article titled A Study on Content and Management Style of Corporate Blogs the author explains that the employee’s send what they want to post to the moderator, who then edits it before it is posted. This is called a centralized style, the moderator decides if the post follows the companies policy of blogging and if so it is then posted with the authors name. This style also helps keep a constant theme for the blog and makes the company unified. GM’s blog has discussions with car buyers, the blog is an efficient way to to build relationships with their stakeholders by eliminating the use of traditional media. In Corporate Blogging Strategies of the Fortune 500 Companies it explained how GM has also started a smaller promotional blog more for a specialized group. This has not been as successful because there is low readership. Along with the fact there wasn’t a human voice and seen more as advertising. That is why the traditional blog with conversation has more feedback because the company is not trying to force their product on their consumers. So the success with GM is because they follow the criteria for a good blog by having a conversations with their constituents. I think that GM has a good start by having a blog where they value their consumers and discuss updates with them. However, I wonder what customer would think if they all knew that posts were being monitored.
GM Fastlane Blog
GM’s Stratagies:
One moderator to keep the blog unified.
Having conversations with their stakeholders
Not making the blog more of an advertisement
In my opinion, moderating these blogs and making it well-known that they are being moderated takes away from the authenticity of it. Granted, very few things may be changed in employee’s submitted blog posts and very few may be turned down, but the consumer do not know this. When I, as a consumer, find out that a corporate blog is being moderated, the first thing that comes to mind is a CEO or other main figure in a company regulating what can be said by employees. This idea really turns me off because you would think that, since you hired them and should be treating them well, you would trust that anything that they would say in a blog post would be anything but detrimental to the company. I understand the idea of keeping a theme going with the blog posts, but I believe it is more important just to give the viewers what they want. If it is mainly a blog about how GM is remaining environmentally conscious, but consumers would rather talk about child safety locks in SUVs, why should any employee be kept from responding to such desires? I applaud GM’s attempt at becoming interactive using social media, but I do believe that they should have more respect for and trust in their employees. There are more steps to be taken before they are completely successful in the social media spectrum.
I completely agree with Leslie. Though I think it is very important for corporate blogs to be consistent in the way the blog looks and feels, as well as how topics are discussed, I also believe that moderating the blog cuts off the voice of the company’s huge workforce. The employees obviously have something to say if they are blogging about the company at all. It may be a good idea to have a compromise regarding the moderation of the corporate blog. Such a compromise may be to let any employee post on the blog authentically after they have completed a small seminar as to what is proper blog etiquette in the corporate atmosphere. This way, the readers of the blog will know that it is coming straight from the employees, but executives will not have to worry about inappropriate content being posted.
I agree with you leslie. Even though GM has a corporate blog I don’t think moderating content is the best way to build trust. I mean if they moderate for grammer to edit I think that is ok
I also think that having a moderator decide what goes on the blog and what doesn’t kind of takes away from the authenticity of it but at the same time, if someone has a bad day at work or gets fired and has access to the blog then you don’t want that person to post something that will make the company look bad. It only takes a few minutes for something to be up on a blog, especially one that receives a lot of traffic, that will haunt the company for weeks, months, maybe even years. Although that would have to be something pretty bad. I do like that the blog encourages conversation though because I feel that, with cars especially, there is always a lot to be said by people who are passionate about these things and would love to have someone else to talk to that feels the same way.
Also, having one person gives the site a type of personality that is reflect by the person writing that can be constant. This allow the people to build that relationship faster, or at least I think so. I think monitoring blogs is fine as long as the message is not filtered out. So language can be a little too much and of course for grammar too.