Some have called Corporate Social Responsibility the “New PR Campaign” for the corporation. Our experience shows it’s far more than that. When a company like Novartis reaches out to support NPR programming, they are taking time to invest in the broader community. Brewery, Molson, leverages a comprehensive blog to communicate it’s CSR programs. But few members of the general public leave comments, even when they are enabled. Does this indicate apathy or lack of trust of Big Corporate? Blogs can play a vital role in CSR, but our experience shows it is not where the company should necessary play actively.

The Molson CSR blog is just one example of a blog run by an Enterprise that is pushing a message, but no one responds, other than family or employees. The very nature of a blog is to invite 2-way conversation. What makes a blog highly successful is not just readers, but participants actively commenting. They don’t have to be meaningful comments on an entry, simply one-liners or “I agree” type statements - the key point here is that they convey a sense of activity, of engagement. In research of over 15 corporate sponsored and run CSR blogs, only 3 had any level of engagement. Meaning comments outside of recognizable family or employees.

A corporate sponsored blog detailing CSR activities is a key part of a communications strategy, and opening it up for direct comments is an excellent way to invite communication. Our findings however, indicate the usual views of the general public; that commenting on the corporate sponsored blog is not really a way to get ones message across. Most tend to feel that it is more viable to find an individual blogger who is not sponsored by the corporation in question, and to engage there.

So while a corporate sponsored CSR blog is a good strategy, since it enables quick and timely communication and leaves the door open to engage, a company is better off monitoring the blogosphere than it is building and simply monitoring its own CSR blog. Participating in those independent blogs is a whole other strategy and process. But monitoring is key to the PR team. We’ve seen several companies simply monitor their own CSR blog and use unique visits as a metric for success - but this doesn’t give a viable measurement. People may view a corporate CSR blog, but the whole idea of Social Media is engagement, and evaluating negative, positive and neutral commentary.