engaging online: experiences from a corporate blogging portal by simon henderson, director of...

Engaging online – lessons and experiences from the UK's first corporate blogging portal

Simon Henderson

Director of Corporate Responsibility & Internal Communications at Centrica

Engaging online

Experiences from a corporate blogging portal

Simon Henderson Centrica

19 November 2009

3

Centrica.com

4

•Facilitate debate

•A dynamic platform

for big energy

issues

•Engaging and

impactful

Centrica Views

5

Challenges before launch

• Not a consumer brand – who are our corporate

audiences and what can we blog to them about?

• Demonstrating the value - does the effort involved

have any payback?

• Could this engagement backfire

• How do we identify bloggers internally and encourage

them to be active

• Maintaining regular content

6

•Graduates led the

way…

•Tech savvy

•Encouraged

comments

•Easy to measure

impact

Graduate blogs

7

•Covering energy

industry and

company topics

•Experts from

around the

business

•Starting to get cut

through with

opinion formers

Corporate blogs

8

•Live Q&A

•Direct dialogue with

stakeholders

•Openness and

transparency

Graduate web chats

9

The ways people can

follow us

Social Media

10

•Channel for news and

updates

•Not just press

releases

•Promotion of site

content, events,

blogs, careers etc

Twitter

11

•Corporate and brand

videos

•A driver to

centrica.com

YouTube

12

•A hub page for

our SM presence

•Feeds from our

other channels

Facebook

13

Winning people over internally

• Develop a strategy

• Find ways to measure the impact

• Start relatively small and safely

• Target one audience at a time

• Work closely with legal and media colleagues

• Develop a clear but speedy sign off process

14

•Local community

concerns

•Discussed on Twitter

Langage power station

15

•We were able to

respond in same

forum

•Monitoring system

worked

•Able to address

concerns quickly

Langage power station

16

Addressing myths

through their web site

Starbucks

17

The lessons

• Don’t expect miracles

relatively low hit rate / comments

need to manage expectations

low initial engagement

• BUT stakeholders appreciate it

18

Summary – so far, it’s been a success

• Centrica Views – a FTSE100 integrated blogging platform

• Rising interest @ 3,500 views per month

• CR web chat – 26 questions in 1.5 hours

• Issues handled

• Beginning to be integrated into our way of working