Corporate America 2.0

Continuing on with my endless rant about "corporate blogging" failing to live up to my expectations, I propose the term Corporate America 2.0 as a conceptual placeholder for businesses that really commit to the concept of seriously engaging their customers and other stakeholders in a public and "naked" manner (i.e., without pretensions and ill-disguised agendas).

I don't have a fixed set of expectations for Corporate America 2.0, but they might include the following:

1. A prominent "Blog" button on the business' main web page, as well on any other important web pages that are associated with a product or service that a customer or other stakeholder might "land" on.
2. No requirement that senior executives must blog, but corporate representatives who are both knowledgeable and have the authority to make decisions and do something relative to blog comments is a requirement. Product managers and engineers and corporate strategists would all be welcome.
3. It would be nice for senior executives to occasionally "check in", with some meaningful posts or even comments on other posts, and especially comment on reader comments and engage in some "naked conversations".
4. There should be regular "Tell us what you'd like to hear about" posts so readers can provide give arbitrary feedback that may be off-topic for recent posts. Corporate representatives should endeavor to be responsive to such feedback/requests. Don't force readers to send feedback only by email or some "contact us" web page. Sure, it's okay to allow anonymous or private feedback, but lets try to encourage public discussion.

That's a start. No sense going further until some people in Corporate America decide that they want to make the leap over to Corporate America 2.0.

Startups of course have no excuse for not starting out as Corporate America 2.0 from Day One.

Oh? You don't have the staff to be responsive to customers? Well, it is absolutely okay to recruit users as surrogate representatives. Give them special briefings, corporate visits, etc. so they have the background to be responsive.

So, Corporate America, what are you waiting for?

-- Jack Krupansky