I asked Arieanna Foley of Blogaholics (www.blogaholics.com) to compile a list of uses for blogs.

Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list, as companies are thinking up new ways to use blogs every day. Equally obvious is the fact that I can’t cover all of these uses in this little article. I will, however, be taking a look at some of the top ways you can use blogs internally and externally to improve your business. As you can see in Table 4-1, the problem isn’t finding ways to use blogs, it’s finding the right way to bring the most value to your business. If your goals are internal, and you’re trying to increase communication, you can accomplish them in a variety of ways. If your goals are external, and you’re trying to increase the trust and visibility of your company, a thought-leadership oriented blog can be ideal. We could get pretty deep pretty fast, but for now let’s look at two companies that are using blogs in innovative ways to reshape the way they do business in the areas in which the blogs are targeted.

GIVING YOUR COMPANY A VOICE: THE GENERAL MOTORS STORY

In January 2005, a milestone event happened: Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, started blogging. Lutz was the first executive leader of a non-tech Fortune 100 company to be a primary contributor to a blog. His personal style and approachable passion created an entirely new communication channel for GM, allowing customers to engage with him directly about products, services, and the future of the company. Lutz is equally passionate about car design and his blog, which is an important part of being a successful blogger at any level of a company, and he constantly affirms his belief in his audience and in blogging. “We want you to keep watching and keep talking to us, that’s why I’m out here,” Lutz declared in his second blog post (January 7, 2005, http://fastlane .gmblogs.com/archives/2005/01/great_comments_1.html). In just five months, the GM FastLane blog became one of the most important unfiltered voices on the Internet, as the company expressed itself freely through Lutz and other executives, and as customers learned that their voices were heard. The scores of car enthusiasts who frequent the FastLane blog, as well as GM’s earlier blogging endeavor, the Smallblock Engine Blog, have in Lutz a willing and able communicator whose passion for cars in general, and GM vehicles in particular, is contagious.

Most of the posts on the FastLane blog, as well as GM’s other blogs, attract scores, if not hundreds, of comments, creating a dynamic, passionate, and vibrant community. If there were ever any doubts that blogging was all about the conversation that takes place between companies, customers, and bloggers, the FastLane blog put those doubts to rest. According to the Feedster Top 500 for August 2005 (http://top500.feedster.com/), the FastLane blog is among the top 500 blogs on the Internet, and the willingness of the team behind the blog to learn and adapt to blogging has been phenomenal. GM became one of the first companies to create a podcast (an online radio show distributed directly to MP3 players), which is a hit among customers. The blogs, podcasts, and overall interaction with customers provide GM valuable and direct feedback from customers, car owners, and enthusiasts about what they think of GM as a company, as a car maker, and as an innovator. This is feedback the company would not otherwise be able to obtain in such a direct manner.

A POSTER CHILD FOR EXECUTIVE BLOGGING

Neville Hobson (www.nevon.net) wrote a case study in early 2005, which included information about GM’s blogging efforts as well as the growth and lessons learned on the blogs. Hobson refers to the GM FastLane blog as “undoubtedly the current poster child for executive blogs.” Since FastLane’s launch, several other GM executives have become involved in the GM blog, adding a “breadth and depth of interaction developing on the blog while remaining wholly focused on the blog’s key goal developing dialogue about GM’s products and services.”1 GM’s foray into blogging has been challenging as it continues to run while still learning to walk. The blog has included trackbacks, started a podcast, and interacted successfully with bloggers around the world. Each new step in reaching out to the blogging community of enthusiasts has created new and positive experiences for customers. More than that, though, the GM blogs have become a place for customers to share their passions and positive experiences, thus creating a self-sustaining community of product evangelists for GM.

GM has given its customers a voice in the company, but it has also gained so much trust with customers that it, too, has a direct and unfiltered line of communication with the marketplace that has become indispensable.

LESSONS LEARNED

General Motors and, in particular, Lutz has led the field in terms of using blogging, podcasting, and other emerging ways of communicating directly with customers. Among the lessons that can be learned from Lutz and the crew who run the GM blogs are these:

• Don’t be afraid to be honest. Several times since the GM blog started, GM could have played dumb and stayed quiet in hopes that a negative comment or issue would simply disappear or be forgotten. Instead, Lutz and other GM blog contributors have tackled rumors, layoffs, corporate restructuring, and product line controversies head-on. They’ve been open and honest, and in so doing have not only got the truth out about what’s going on at GM (as any true window blogger would do, as we’ll see in Article 5), but they have also created a sense of trust with readers.

• Use blogrolls. Blogrolls show off the other blogs that you read and respect. From the first day of GM’s blog launch, a blogroll was included, not only to increase their visibility (all the bloggers they linked to were aware of the links quickly, thanks to blog tracking services), but also to show that GM bloggers knew what they were talking about: the GM blog didn’t link to every car blog in the world only those that matched its passions and interests.

• Ask people what they think. If you ask no questions, you get no answers. GM has been openly soliciting customer feedback from the beginning and has, as a result, not only culled a huge amount of free customer feedback, but also earned a reputation among readers and car enthusiasts for caring about what people think.

• Be passionate. When you are speaking for your company, it is sometimes easy to fall into a mishmash of legal-cum-PR speak that uses a lot of words without saying anything at all. Most press releases use this tone. GM has shown, primarily through Lutz, that passion isn’t something to be feared. This blog has shown that it’s far better to passionate about the right thing than to be dispassionate about everything.

• Be fair to competitors. It is too easy to think of your company as the best in the business, or at least to try and convey that to readers. GM has been unafraid to praise its competitors on its blog. The result is that GM has built up great trust among its readers, so that when GM does say it is the best at something, readers tend to believe it.

• Have a genuine voice. Real people have to write your blog, so why not let them sound like real people? GM has consistently allowed the people who write the various blogs to act, sound, and respond normally, without using PR jargon. The relationships that have been built, and the buzz that has been generated as a result, have been phenomenal. This list of lessons learned isn’t a requirement for you to succeed in blogging. However, by adopting these principles, you, like GM, can not only raise your profile among bloggers and blog readers, but also build up a huge sense of trust, goodwill, and passion. Any company can produce an advertisement that says it is passionate about its product, but GM shows it through its blogs, every day. So can you.