The interactivity of a blog is one of its greatest advantages. The writer and others at a company can get direct feedback on new products, promotions, and suggestions on how to improve or fix problems. They can even search the ‘net for other blogs’ comments pertaining to their company.
This feedback comes in the form of reader comments. Instead of spending mucho dinero on traditional market research methods, such as focus groups, they can essentially get the same information for free through a blog. The biggest drawback is that a product or service will no longer be secret once put into the public forum.
If comments are moderated, only a person with the blog log-in information can see all of the them. If they are not moderated, the company runs the risk of obscene, offensive and/or spam comments being posted. It’s also likely that there will be comments that criticize something about the company.
By deleting or blocking all negative comments, it raises suspicions. There’s no company in the world that has never had a customer complaint, and if a blog makes that appear that’s the case, then it is deceptive. Most blogs that I have seen moderate comments, but most of them also allow constructively critical comments, as in comments that don’t use obscene language or make baseless accusations or insults. Allowing these comments to be posted shows that the company is (hopefully) acknowledging problems.
Sometimes comments are approved by the blog editor but then someone higher-up in the company decides the comments are too inflammatory and should be taken down. One can sometimes retrieve deleted pages through the Internet cache, but this is often not the case, especially with blogs.
An editorial piece on the Blood-Horse magazine’s Web site was blasted with negative comments, calling it self-serving and a conflict of interest. When some of the negative comments were deleted, a blogger wrote this entry asking where they went. He cited a cached version of the editorial page. When he posted a comment about the missing comments, it was not approved. According to one of the Blood-Horse’s Web site managers, the feature that requires comments to be approved before posting was disabled at the time the original negative comments were posted. Yet, blog managers deleted only some of the negative comments.
Another instance of deleted blog content causing controversy. The Los Angeles Times asks if MTV forced blogger Scott Aukerman to delete one of his posts about the MTV Movie Awards. He wrote that the stunt between Sacha Baron Cohen and Eminem was staged.
In this guide to blogging ethics, Carolynne Burkholder writes that bloggers should, among other things:
• Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
• [Not] self censor by removing posts or comments once they are published
• Allow and encourage comments on your blog
BUT, this ethics guide considers blogs a form of journalism. Are corporate blogs journalism? More on that in another entry.
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