Blogs, at their simplest, should be seen by a corporation as their entry point into the online conversation. The ease which blog software brings to self-publishing cannot and should not be understated or underestimated. Everyone is using them to talk about whatever they would like to talk about.

Often, it seems, companies look at blogging software and feel that it’s too simple, that any tool that is so easy that a member of the general public can have a blog up and running inside of ten minutes can’t possibly have applications for the business world. Besides, there are all those sticky issues of negative comments and people who might disagree with you and really, isn’t that what marketing is all about? Protecting the company from the malcontents?

No, actually. Marketing’s chief duty is to spread the word of the company and its products to any and all who will listen in the hopes that money is made. That mindset should, in a perfect world, be platform agnostic. If X channel works to communicate a particular message to the preferred target then it should be used without hesitation or fear. Alternatives likely cost more money, either out of the box or in terms of time spent on getting things setup.

In this chapter I’m not going to be addressing the issue of how the audience is publishing their own blogs so much as I’m going to talk about how the audience is reading blogs, particularly corporate blogs.

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Marvel Team-Up: Spider-Man and Ghost Rider

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Sony Pictures was one of the first studios, in my experience, to use a blog as an active part of its movie’s campaign. The studio launched a blog for Spider-Man 2 in early 2004 that was authored by producer Grant Curtis. The blog, nestled in the “Daily Planet” portion of the site devoted to news about the movie, contained entries on how the movie was progressing as it moved from the end of shooting to the lengthy post-production process.

Entries on Curtis’ blog served the same purpose, at their core, as the announcements on a commuter train of where the train is pulling into now and where the next stop will be. His posts were signals to the readership that this is where the movie currently was and what would be coming next. Much like a rider waiting for his stop, the audience was free to assign each post the value each individual saw fit.

Allowing Curtis – or anyone else for that matter – to blog about Spider-Man 2 could not have been an easy decision for Sony. The movie was the sequel to one of the most successful movies of recent years. The first Spider-Man had also been credited with bringing people back to the movies after a disappointing 2001 and early 2002. With high expectations and a big budget to return on, blogging was likely seen as a risk, something that could do more harm than good by allowing people a Sony-hosted venue for their criticisms. It’s also important to note that in 2005 blogging was still largely being dismissed as something done by people with built-in gripes, or who felt their cats were the most interesting in the world.

In 2007 Sony once again got into the blogging game with two movies. Continuing the success they had with the first one, the studio launched a new blogsite for Spider-Man 3 that resided on a new domain from the one created for Spider-Man 2. Again authored primarily by producer Grant Curtis, the blog contained not only his missives from the set and the post-production facilities, but as a result of the web having evolved since 2005 it also contained quite a bit more video.

These video segments most closely resembled the featurettes that are commonplace on DVD home video releases. Often a member of the cast or crew was interviewed or a craftsman took the camera on a tour of the workshop to show how costumes or sets were created or assembled. This sort of behind-the-scenes feature had a dual purpose. Not only did it create a deeper, more interesting and entertaining experience for the fan/viewer, but it also created yet another point of lift-off for the rest of the online conversation. A good number of the top-line movie news blogs would link to the blog entries containing these videos.

A bit earlier in 2007 Sony also released Ghost Rider, another adaptation of a Marvel super-hero. This one starred Nicolas Cage as a stunt rider who becomes a bounty hunter for the devil, cursed to bring souls to him for collection. Like with Spider-Man 3, Sony had a blog all setup for the chronicling of the movie’s journey from the stage to the screen. Because this was a new cinematic property and because Ghost Rider is a less well-known character in the Marvel pantheon this blog focused almost primarily on the special effects that would become the center-piece of the finished film.

Like S-M 3’s, the Ghost Rider blog would rely heavily on video content, with each entry again featuring a chat with a member of the cast or crew. Unlike the Spider-Man blogs, the Ghost Rider site lacked a strong author who made the site his own. Instead it seemed to be fairly generic, with the focus being on the video and not much attention paid to the community the blog had the potential to become a part of.

Curtis, on his Spider-Man blogs, spent a lot of time interacting with fans. Comments on entries were open and people could submit questions, answer questions from Curtis himself and more. This sort of interactivity, the fact that there was a conversation going on with someone involved with (two, eventually) highly-anticipated films created an amazing sense of engagement in the audience. Most movie fans dream of having backstage access to a movie they’re looking forward to. Here was their opportunity to have a dialogue with someone whose job it was to shepherd a popular property to the big-screen. And fans embraced that opportunity.

(Add something about the number of comments on Curtis’ posts here)

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It’s a bird – It’s a plane – It’s a blog!

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Warner Bros. faced the daunting task of relaunching two major super-hero franchises in 2005. Batman was getting turned back into a vengeful creature of the night after an unfortunate cinematic dalliance with neon and rubber-suited nipples back in the late 1990s. The movie featured some top-line acting and directing talent and was hotly anticipated for bringing the “dark” back to the Dark Knight.

Earlier in the summer, thought, Warner Bros. also relaunched the Superman franchise. The series had petered out from its beginnings in the late 70s to a couple of later sequels that added little to the character and were widely regarded more for their camp value than anything else. Again, Warners had top-name talent involved, with director Bryan Singer defecting from 20^th Century Fox’s Marvel-based X-Men series to take on the Man of Steel.

For Superman Returns the studio launched a blog that was linked to from the main official website but which resided at a Typepad-hosted URL. The blog did not seem to be from one particular author, nor did it provide the sorts of behind-the-scenes access of Grant Curtis’ Spider-Man blogs. But it did serve a purpose that was just as important. The blog served as a distribution platform for updates on the movie’s marketing materials, as well as the marketing of its related video game and more.

New posters were announced on the Superman Returns blog, new screenshots and trailers released for the video game and more. They even linked to the movie’s various trailers and TV spots as the studio itself put the videos on the then-brand-spanking-new YouTube, something that was, at the time, quite groundbreaking.

While not as sexy or as traditionally blog-ish, the use of the site for content alerts was useful because it leveled the playing field for those looking to report on such developments. Any independent blogger, whether for a big site or a small one, could subscribe to updates and receive them at the same time as everyone else.

The importance of that purpose cannot, I think, be overstated. Independent blog authors have to rely greatly on the kindness of strangers. If they don’t have the kind of traffic to catch the eye of the studio they likely won’t be included on the email blasts that announce new collateral or other news. But the blog platform makes it available for everyone at the same time. Putting everyone on the same level playing field greatly increases the possibilities for pick-up by the new generation of writers.

More importantly, it allows those writers to link back to an officially-sanctioned source with the news. If there’s no outlet like this than it’s left to the smaller blog runner to link to the bigger sites when news breaks, something that’s great for the latter site’s traffic but not so good for either the smaller blogger or the marketing studio in question.