Keeping in touch : corporate blogs for building organizational public relationships and consumer brand relations

With the continual expansion of social media, organization-public relationships (OPR) have become all the more important to keep up with consumers. While historically companies have maintained a public relations office, a relatively new idea of actually building relationships through the media has started to emerge through social media. Using observations of bloggers through a netnographic study and discourse analysis, this paper confirms that corporate executive blogs can be used to effectively manage customer relations. Using a sample of 123 blog posts and comments from the medical, technology, and travel industries, this study validates that OPRs can be maintained and strengthened through blogs while justifying the time commitment and devotion executives give to keep in touch with consumers.