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Bryan Person wonders whether and when a blogger should be engaged who may not be blogging accurately about Bryan’s organization. We think Bryan answers his own question in his comment. Smart thinking.
Bryan is on the right track, and good for him for thinking about the question. I would suggest that he / his organization need to engage him, but only if: they’re ready for every step of the exchange to be blogged, if they’re willing to take his input at face value, and if they’re willing to say “y’know, you’re right. We should do that”… and then DO IT.
Don’t look at it as an opportunity to ‘educate’ — once you engage him by saying something to him, he’s got to lead the dance.
Great perspective Bob. You’re right about being prepared to engage the blogger out in the open, for all to see. That’s the transparent nature of the beast…
Our PR team is concerned that engaging him will somehow legitimize his inaccurate comments, and that the savvy readers of his blog will know to tune out his criticism of our company.
Our team also suspects that this blogger might even ridicule our attempts to engage him, and say that this proves he’s been right all along.
I don’t necessarily agree with this approach, but our PR folks may have more background on the blogger than I do.
My opinion? Transparent engagement is almost always the best course of action.
It’s a tough one. Traditionally, this is pretty fair counsel from the PR team. You rarely want to keep the bad news fresh by continuing the conversation in the media. But in these days of indexing and searching, I’d advise that it’s best to put your point-of-view next to the blogger’s so it can be found.
It’s for these very reasons that companies should consider their own blogs–so they can state their case on their own terms.
Every case is different of course, and I don’t know your business or the blogger. However, I’d show the PR team the Kryptonite case study…while extreme it demonstrates how news can travel around the blogosphere. At least they know the guy and are tracking his posts. That’s more than many companies are doing right now.