Telstra's blog, Telstra Exchange has been named as one of the top 25 corporate blogs in Australia. Head of Online and Social Media, Danielle Horan and Online Publisher and Community Engagement Manager, Brendan O’Keefe spoke to SMK about how the Telstra Exchange blog is managed.

Do you have an idea of who your audience is?

Danielle: We know that we have our customers on there, and we have a particularly tech-savvy group on there. We also have a lot of staff, the media goes to the blog site, we know shareholders go to the blog site as well, so in terms of an audience it's quite varied. A lot of engagement comes from the customers when there are product updates or just news on what we're doing.

Who writes the blogs?

Brendan: We've got about 50 bloggers. Some of them are just once in a blue moon, but then we've got regular ones like Michael Lewis, who just loves products and has a great history at Telstra with product development. He's done around 49 blogs.

Danielle: It's really important that we've got a close eye on making sure that we’re highlighting people in the organisation. That's what's so wonderful about these channels. Generally when you hear from brands and businesses in the old world it was via TV commercials or it was the ad that you took out in the paper, but now we really get the opportunity to highlight our people and highlight what goes on behind the scenes. We've got a lot of staff, we've got 43,000 staff members at Telstra, so there's such wonderful opportunities to highlight some of their attributes; characteristics and personalities behind the business.

These 50 bloggers, do you regularly interact with them?

Brendan: We have a bloggers meet up which is every two months. There are two: there's one online and there's one in Melbourne. There’s a calendar that I got off the Victorian schools website that shows all the days of the year – like Librarian day and National Disability day. I will let people know what's coming up in the next month or two and then I'll have a topic to talk about. I try and guide people into writing about themes, sometimes people are too scared to write a whole blog so they might write a paragraph on their thoughts on a particular topic.

Danielle: And then all of our leaders are out and about at different events, so we'll try and get them in to give us a thought or two.

Would you use your channels in a crisis management situation?

Danielle: I think there's a lot more, maybe ‘pressure’, for corporates, particularly an organisation like Telstra, to be communicating regularly when there are natural disasters and I know that we did definitely use both our blog and also our Twitter handle as well for the Queensland floods.

Brendan: We had an immediate need to announce some packages and let people know what we were doing. We created a hash tag on twitter for Telstra floods, we used Telstra news which was a separate Twitter handle to send stuff out to people and then we had Jon Parkin who looks after Queensland infrastructure do a series of blogs over two weeks. I think he did 26 blogs, sometimes it was twice a day. We'd say, ‘ok we're now fixing up this area and this is the package that we're offering and these are the steps to get it fixed’. We'd also put out tip blogs occasionally: don't use too much of your battery, refrain from doing this that and the other, how to stop yourself from getting electrocuted all that sort of stuff. It went down really well.

In terms of sign off for blogs, does communications just sign off on it and it goes?

Danielle: It's an informal process, but it does go through our legal team as well, they'll just take a look over, be careful about some things. But basically we'll work with the right communications person, we'll have a look at it and Brendan will make a judgment based on his expertise of the audience as well. That's really important, understanding what's going to appeal and what's not going to appeal to an audience. I think language is so important with this stuff, it's not about rehashing a media release at all, it's got to be in the first person.

In the year ahead, Telstra plan to embrace video, having purchased a number of small video cameras which can be sent out into the business.   They will continue with the Telstra Exchange blog and popular podcast, as well as engaging with stakeholders and customers through social media channels.