Formal Blogs and Informal Blogs (or social media): What Look, Message and Style Fits You?

GE Aviation blog, slick design, corporate message, fits the image

The image of user contributed content, especially blogs (i.e. Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, Tumblr) and social media sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) as informal and not useful in slick corporate marketing is not exactly true. For the most part, this is just an image. Some would say outdated and simply not useful. Looking carefully on how different organizations use blog formats, reveals a more complex landscape. Blogs started out as an alternative (and easy to use) publication platform. Quickly, they became the alternative opposition-voice in many areas, especially politics, technology, finance, and medicine. Blogs such as The Huffington Post, Giga Om, Engaget, TechCrunch, The Motley Fool, and WebMD became popular sites quickly. With their edgy writing and sometimes “big brother - conspiracy busting” style, it seemed like the internet would become a realm of popular writing with democratic leanings. Yet this idea, did not reflect the whole potential of digital media in government, corporate, media (written, audio, and video), and creative fields. While the out of favor and non-mainstream writers were enjoying complete freedom to say their piece, the more traditional media and corporate world took a wait and see attitude towards internet publishing. The traditional media channels simply did not need the internet as much as the other voices. They were also waiting for more reliable and better designed (i.e. look and feel) capability. That landscape has changed radically. Today we see the most slick and corporate marketing communicators using the blog format in creative ways, without the outsider leanings. The same is true for social media sites, where mainstream marketing is taking hold in a big way.

So is user contributed format changing? Or are we talking about simply new formats adopted by traditional communication channels? It seems as different uses by a broad range of users with different application. Overall, many traditional communicators are adopting new formats to get their message out. The use of internet communication is simply so sweeping, the movement from traditional channels to new digital channels. Blogs and social media formats are popular, effective, and are easily adapted to the traditional content. Also, the new formats have matured design to look slick when corporate managers want to keep their image in line with traditional print media. There are questions from both traditional communicators and new media professionals on how to deal with the shift into user contributed content. Some of the questions I hear over and over are reflective of the concern each has about the other side's intentions. Here are some topics:

• Can user contributed content replace traditional corporate and media content?
• Who exactly contributes content? Are users customers? Target audience? Employees or traditional marketing writers and designers?
• How does an stable traditional organization makes the shift to user contributed content? How do individuals make the shift?
• In abandoning a traditional approach for a new and unproven one, how does one know it will work? What needs to be done to assure a successful transition in adopting new communication formats and techniques?
• In the new era of user contributed content, there are different service and work (professional roles) structure, how do we adopt or transition to these structures? (freelance and service project based structures)
• It seems like adopting new media user contributed content is the pursuit of the younger professionals. What will happen to the older professionals not making the transition to new roles?
• What happens if the transition fails? Is there a recovery plan? Can one take a wait and watch strategy until the new format works to end the current work?

Some of the issues seem like worrisome or even negative, anti-change excuses. Yet in reality, concerns about major changes do not seem to stop changes. In the end of the day, each business manager will take action as he sees fit. This is what we see in the more conservative and highly designed images of the larger organizations. GE Aviation, manufacturer of turbine engines, by its nature is a large organization with large customers. This organization does not make hasty decisions in marketing or communication. When they design and publish a blog, it will certainly reflect their image and industry position. While there are issues related to new technologies (i.e. UAVs) and less traditional uses of their products, the company is going to keep a uniform look and design, as well as message style. This example is a good way to see the more traditional communication channels shifting into new user contributed content formats.