Josh Hallett takes corporations to task for visiting blogs but not commenting. He asks whether companies visiting blogs but not commenting are “prank calling” your blog. I don’t think so.

A prank call amounts to a nuisance. Someone visiting your blog and not leaving a response is not a nuisance. It’s a choice that every individual or organization has the right to make.

The responses to Josh’s post reveal something very interesting. Some bloggers get angry when they write about a company and the company doesn’t respond directly by commenting on the original post.

David Parmet reveals his frustration about being considered “just a blogger” by corporations. Should David be frustrated? Or should a person blogging about a corporation be satisfied with knowing they had an opportunity to get the word out on their experiences whether they are good or bad? I lean towards the latter opinion.

For the past year or so I’ve run a blog called Red Room Chronicles that chronicles (surprise surprise!) my experiences staying at Marriott hotels. I recently got a response from a person at Marriott PR acknowledging the existence of my blog and offering updates on par with those delivered to major news organizations. This was not done via a comment but via an email.

The receipt of this communication was a pleasant surprise, especially because the contact was unsolicited. Was I frustrated that they hadn’t contacted me earlier even though I know they knew about the blog? Absolutely not.

As someone who blogs about a variety of topics I’ve adopted the following principles.

• When you want the readers of your blog to know about something write about it in a post.
• When you want a specific person or organization to reply to you contact them directly.
• Don’t get upset if no one responds to your blog post.
• Get upset when you directly contact someone and they fail to respond.

In some cases it probably makes sense to blog about an issue (because you want others to know) and contact the organization directly (because you want a response).

Any good organization will have one or more channels set up for contacting them directly. Some organizations (bravo to them) may use blogs. Others may use discussion forums, email support, support by chat or telephone. I believe that as a customer of a company that you should give them the opportunity to respond via a channel that they have set up for receiving feedback.

On the other hand, these organizations have the responsibility of actively maintaining one or more channels for direct communication with the general public. One of those channels just might be a blog. But it may not be. So be it.

I do think that smart companies will monitor and get involved in blogs where their brand or products are mentioned. But I don’t think that those companies have a responsibility to respond to a channel created and maintained by someone else.

[tags]Social Media, Blogging, Communications, Customer Service, Josh Hallett, David Parmet[/tags]