Wie wirken Corporate Blogs: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchung
Posted on March 20, 2006
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eine umfangreiche Veröffentlichung zu diesem Thema findet man hier:
Organizational Blogs and the Human Voice: Relational Strategies and Relational Outcomes
Tom Kelleher, Barbara M. Miller
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Inhalt:
This study develops and tests operational definitions of relational maintenance strategies appropriate to online public relations. An experiment was designed to test the new measures and to test hypotheses evaluating potential advantages of organizational blogs over traditional Web sites. Participants assigned to the blog condition perceived an organization’s “conversational human voice” to be greater than participants who were assigned to read traditional Web pages. Moreover, perceived relational strategies (conversational human voice, communicated relational commitment) were found to correlate significantly with relational outcomes (trust, satisfaction, control mutuality, commitment)… Web logs, or blogs, offer a unique channel for developing and maintaining relationships between organizations and publics. The purpose of this study is to triangulate professional literature on online communication, scholarship on relational maintenance strategies and relational outcomes, and quantitative data to explore the potential of blogs as tools for public relations. The centrality of relationships in building public relations theory is clearly apparent in recent scholarly literature, and this interest is not limited to the ivory tower. Public relations professionals also have taken interest in relationships as the foundation for their work and have sought ways to measure their contributions as such.
Konklusion:
The observed advantage of blogs in conveying a conversational human voice echoes what popular and professional literature on the nature of blogs already tells us. Blogs are a good place to speak candidly with a conversational style (e.g., “invite people to a conversation”), and this conversational style may be an important part of the process of building and maintaining computer-mediated relationships. Among the most important findings of this study are that 1) blogs were perceived as more conversational than organizational Web sites, and 2) this conversational human voice correlated positively with other previously-identified relationship outcomes. The perceived personal nature of organizational blogs, in this case, is related to relationship indicators. But when public relations people want to discuss their commitment to the relationship between their organizations and publics, or to communicate the organization’s desire to build relationships (identified as communicated relational commitment), this is likely done just as well where people would expect to find such information, in the more traditional venues of case studies and corporate Web pages. Although blogs allow people representing organizations to speak candidly, blogs may not be the best venue for “PR” messages intended to talk up an organization’s commitment to its public relationships.
As Searls and Weinberger expounded “… the best of the people in PR are not PR Types at all… they’re the company’s best conversationalists” (2001, p. 90). This is quite a conundrum for the practice and theory of public relations. Answering the riddle requires an understanding of which relational strategies should be (and should not be) used in which forums. At the heart of the matter are the questions of who public relations people are and how they communicate to build and maintain solid relationships, online and elsewhere. This paper offers valuable theoretical tools for pursuing this line of inquiry. To enter the market conversation, Web sites need to have a voice, express a point of view, ignite a dialogue, and give access to helpful people (Searls & Weinberger, 2001). It all starts with having a voice. Expressing a point of view in a personal tone in a blog is likely a good way to get a conversation started. The actual interaction between organizations and their publics that follows is a promising focus of future research.
Viel Zeit mitbringen beim Lesen der Analyse!