Cons of Blogging

While Lancaster-Webb is benefitting from Glove Girl‘s blogging about their products, there is significant risk to the company in having an employee writing about the company without being officially sanctioned, managed, or monitored by the organization’s marketing and risk management departments. For example, Glove Girl reported that the Houston Clinic, a potential buyer of Lancaster-Webb’s new glove line, had a much higher cesarean delivery rate than other others in the market. Glove Girl, before having all of the facts about the situation and not knowing that there was a valid reason for the clinic having such a high cesarean rate, alienated a potential client of the company (Suitt, 2003). This arguably would not have happened had the blogger, Glove Girl, been connected with the marketing or communications department of the company.
Another significant risk the company is allowing Glove Girl on her own to blog about the company. Glove Girl has built a large and loyal audience by blogging about the company and its products on her own and there is a chance she could become a disgruntled employee and have control of a significant forum where she could just as easily write negative entries in her blog. Brody and Wheelin (2005) wrote of the act of “cybersmearing”, an act in which former and current employees have maliciously disclosed confidential information and engaged in personal and professional attacks against management that have, in some cases, undermined the stock price of the company (p. 12). By allowing Glove Girl to be a de facto spokesperson for the organization, Lancaster-Webb is giving her credibility that she could later use to harm the company.
By allowing an employee to provide information on the Internet about a company’s product, the company runs the risk of the general public mistaking the blogger for being an official spokesperson for the organization. A fear that a company’s communication or marketing department will have regarding a company blogger is that the blogger gets off message. This is a legitimate concern for Lancaster-Webb since so many of Glove Girl’s followers could view her as officially representing Lancaster-Webb. Thus, anything she says that is not correct could undermine the company’s strategies. Allowing Glove Girl to continue in an unofficial capacity will put the organization at risk for misrepresentation, malicious conduct, and alienating current and potential customers.