Or, why your com­pany should tell its own story before let­ting oth­ers cut it up

My com­pany, Spark Media Solu­tions, is based on the premise that every busi­ness has the capa­bil­ity of being its own media net­work. Given the end­less tools for cheap to free pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent, there’s absolutely no rea­son a busi­ness must rely on oth­ers to tell their story. Yet for some demented rea­son, it’s still unbe­liev­ably dif­fi­cult try­ing to con­vince cor­po­ra­tions to do just that. Tell your own story. Busi­nesses ingrained with the cul­ture of “cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions” feel far more com­fort­able going through the tra­di­tional chan­nels of PR firms, jour­nal­ists, and bloggers.

Why would you allow the fate and suc­cess of your com­pany to be based only on hop­ing that some­one pub­lishes your story cor­rectly? Why not tell your story your­self? All of the peo­ple that com­pa­nies tra­di­tion­ally rely on to tell their story (e.g., PR pros, jour­nal­ists, blog­gers) are not on the pay­roll. They have no choice but to hear your company’s story through a chain of com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The net result is your story is pub­lished and dis­trib­uted second-, third-, or fourth-hand.

You can’t avoid it, tra­di­tional cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions is cut­ting up your story

When you go through the “tra­di­tional” routes of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, you dilute your story with every sin­gle layer, often deliv­er­ing a watered-down prod­uct. Here’s a stan­dard cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions process:

• Com­pany pur­sues PR firm to rep­re­sent company.
• Com­pany dis­cusses com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­egy with PR firm.
• Com­pany edu­cates PR firm on their prod­ucts, ser­vices, and customers.
• While ini­tial press release con­tent may be approved by com­pany, PR firm rep­re­sents com­pany and pitches jour­nal­ists and blog­gers on company’s prod­ucts and services.
• Journalist/Blogger may take that infor­ma­tion directly and write a piece on the com­pany or just make a mere men­tion of the company.
• OR journalist/blogger requests an inter­view directly from a com­pany or cus­tomer spokesper­son and writes a piece. Orig­i­nal unedited inter­view is not published.

Why do cor­po­ra­tions will­ingly give their audi­ence cut infor­ma­tion? For a cocaine dealer it makes per­fect sense. The con­tent (cocaine) is the prod­uct they’re sell­ing. If they can dilute it, then they can make more and there­fore sell more prod­uct. But for a com­pany the infor­ma­tion they com­mu­ni­cate is the tool they use to sell their prod­ucts and ser­vices. Of course they want that infor­ma­tion out in as many places as pos­si­ble, but when you play this tele­phone game with your company’s infor­ma­tion, you’re putting your fate in other people’s hands.

Give your audi­ence the good stuff, uncut

The rea­son I hear the phrase “We have no time to blog” is because com­pa­nies think every­thing else they do is pro­vid­ing more value to the com­pany than blog­ging could. They don’t real­ize how much more value blog­ging could pro­vide than what they’re cur­rently doing. And it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily require more time. For exam­ple, con­tent writ­ten in a pri­vate email can often be edited to make a valu­able blog post. Since you’re writ­ing it any­way, the effort is already being extended. All you have to do is shift the point of pub­li­ca­tion (email to blog) and dis­tri­b­u­tion (SMTP to web/blog/RSS).

Paul Levy, CEO of the Beth Israel Dea­coness Med­ical Cen­ter, has made a name for him­self and his hos­pi­tal with his blog “Run­ning a Hos­pi­tal,” where he talks about improv­ing the oper­a­tions at the BIDMC, reduc­ing errors, keep­ing peo­ple healthy, and the over­all state of health care in the United States.

A video from Paul Levy’s Run­ning a Hos­pi­tal blog.

I’m often told by C-level employ­ees that they have no time to blog. Yet Levy seems to find the time. When I asked Levy about bal­anc­ing his CEO duties with blog­ging, he didn’t think there shouldn’t be a dis­tinc­tion between the two. “If one of your jobs as CEO of an orga­ni­za­tion is to rep­re­sent that orga­ni­za­tion before the pub­lic with tra­di­tional venues being news­pa­pers, speeches, lec­tures, and the like, then use of social media is a log­i­cal exten­sion of that cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­ity of the CEO. The out­reach poten­tial is excel­lent plus you can express your point of view not being fil­tered by reporters, or edi­tors, or what­ever,” Levy said. Read my full arti­cle and lis­ten to my audio inter­view with Levy on how his pub­lic blog­ging pres­ence has brought enor­mous ben­e­fits to the hospital.

Make your com­pany blog the cen­ter­piece of your efforts

This arti­cle is not designed as a call to fire your PR firm. Rather I want com­pa­nies to see the enor­mous value of hav­ing their own chan­nel, such as a blog, for telling your own story. It should be the first and fore­most place where you should place your company’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions efforts and dol­lars. Press releases don’t tell sto­ries — blogs do. The sec­ond avenue for sto­ry­telling should be the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nel of PR firms, jour­nal­ists, and blog­gers. Of course you’ll want to dis­trib­ute your story to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. The point of hav­ing that blog first is so that every­one knows where the REAL story is, the uncut one.

“Cor­po­rate blog­ging” is not an evil phrase, as many have stereo­typed it to be. Unfor­tu­nately, research firms such as For­rester are still pro­mot­ing that stereo­type. Read my arti­cle “Social media research is chock full of lead­ing ques­tions.“David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.