How And When To Avoid Synthetic Transparency

Steve Rubel touches on the issue of synthetic transparency today, though he did not use the term. He was listening to a question given to one of the panels at the word of mouth conference.

“Idil Kakim from Burson Marsteller asked the panelists whether companies needed to address every single comment/question that comes in on their blogs.�?

Several of the panelists thought that you did not have to respond to every comment; instead you can answer a number of comments in a post or article. I think a company or blogger can do what ever they want to do on their blog. However, as a corporate blogger you have to be aware of the norms of your community, and frankly just the process of responding to customers. If your customers expect that you will respond as a blogger, you should. If I asked the question should a company respond to every telephone call, you’d say yes. But if as an individual you don’t have the capacity to respond then you have to design your blog comment policy in a way that sets the expectations with the readers that you are only going to respond to some people. I highlight this in my article, �? Using ‘Synthetic Transparency’ to set Expectations on the level Of Transparency Found On Your Corporate Blog,�? on General Motors, and provide some suggestions to the Fastlane bloggers on how they should handle comment feedback.

Posted by johncass at January 19, 2006 5:18 PM