There is a theory in communication studies that states that
people, when they first meet another person, desire to lower their uncertainty
about the other person. This is, in a sense, what companies are trying to do
when they advertise. This lowering of uncertainty is what we call, having a
relationship. Before organizations can get their consumers to the point that
they are even willing to reduce the uncertainty about whatever it is that the
organizations are trying to sell (a product or an idea normally), there must be
something that catches the consumer’s attention. Consumers must become familiar
with the organization. This is generally done through branding. Think the Nike
swoosh or the Coca Cola label. This leads to the question of whether an
organization can use blogs to effectively help with the branding process.
Branding is an associative process. It is what people think
about when they see that logo or hear about a company. For instance, when
people see the Nike swoosh, they associate it with sports gear. The association
is with a particular quality of gear that a consumer can buy, usually at a
large markup of price, but people are willing to buy it still. Mostly because
they know (have reduced uncertainty) what they are getting. However, if you
were to ask a student at the University of Oregon what they thought when they
see the Nike logo, they may say something completely different. This is because
the CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, is an alumnus and regularly contributes to the
university. It would seem that, at this stage of branding, an organization
would not want to rely solely on their blog. Yes, they could use the blog to
help reveal the branding but they would also want to rely on traditional and
new campaigns at getting the word of their brand out. People have to be made
aware that there is a product and that the blog is there to help consumers
understand the product better.
The next stage in branding is creating familiarity with the
product(s) that a company offers. This is where a blog can really start to help
in the branding process. A blog is a place to develop a deeper understanding of
a company. Basically, this is where you can define your brand. If the blog is
kept by those who run the company or by those who know what the people in
charge of the company want for that company, this helps consumers get to know
the people of the company better. This is important because people want to know
the people behind a brand before they support what the brand stands for. As I
have mentioned in other blogs, I work at a church. This, to me, is like when a
person is invited to church for the first time. Usually, if they accept the
invitation, it is because they know and trust the person who invited them not
because they are necessarily interested in what the church has to offer. It is
in this vein of thought that a company that decides to start a blog to brand
themselves should work. There is a possibility of developing relationships
online but that is only if there is someone for the consumers to develop that
relationship with.
If a company works on getting the public familiar with their
brand, they can then start to build trust. This works a little different from
people to people relationships because, usually, both people exchange
information to reduce uncertainty in the relationship. However, the burden to
reduce uncertainty in a relationship between an organization and their public
falls firmly on the shoulders of the organization. This is where blogs are
useful but they can also be used to measure the success of the attempts at
reducing that uncertainty by said organizations. One of the ways this could be
measured by the companies using blogs is by monitoring the comments section. As
a company helps its consumers feelings of uncertainty reduce, the amount of
interaction between the two should increase. A lot of companies would only
measure this by looking at the increase in the consumption of their goods but I
think a better way to measure that would be by looking at the comments left on
the blog.
If people actually trust the company then they would feel
more comfortable letting the company know when it is doing well and, more
importantly, when it is doing badly. The
comments left by those who try to help the company improve show that the
consumer has a sense of ownership. This is a measurement of success in
branding. A good example of this is the branding for college sports teams. One
of the goals of sports teams, besides winning of course, is to increase participation
from those who support the team and to widen their reached audience. If you
ever talked to someone who is a fan of a particular team about that team, you
can gain a sense of the ownership that person has with the organization. While
talking about their team, usually they use the pronoun “we” even if they do not
play for the team or go to the school the team represents. Even if the team is
doing poorly, the person will still use the term “we” but they will then offer
what they believe to be the answer to the problems their team is facing. This
shows ownership in the same way that the comments on a blog offering opinions
on how to better serve them do. If a person did not feel ownership of the
company, they would normally just switch to a different company.
This desire for a company to offer a better brand is what
leads to commitment, the final stage of branding. I do not think that a company
will get to this stage just by having a blog; however, if the blog is run
appropriately and is used to reduce the uncertainty of new consumers while
allowing for current consumers to feel as though they belong and can trust the company,
then the use of a blog is most certainly a good tool for branding.
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