B.L. Ochman, a marketing and blogging consultant, has come up with an ingenious way of promoting a business through a blog. For the translation company, SRF Global Translations, she’s set up a blog called Ethics Crisis.com.
On this blog, she’ll be posting about ethical issues and inviting others to anonymously confess their business ethics lapses, so that readers can vote and comment on how they rate the lapse on a scale of 1 to 5, from always acceptable to never acceptable.
In the header, she explains the connection between a translation company and business ethics – EthicsCrisis.com is: “A blog about global business ethics, from SRF Global Translations, specialists in nuanced, localized, multilanguage compliance materials for multinational companies.” Ok, maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but this is too smart an idea to let that matter.
There’s more to the site than just confessions and judgement, too. Using a blogging application, the company now has a nice site which includes more conventional web pages such as: “about us,” “contact us,” “clients,” “translation services,” and “get an estimate.”
It appears that this is the company’s only website, so it’s a good example of how a blog can easily serve in place of a conventional website, and be even better! It looks great, includes all the information you need about a company, and draws you in with the ongoing conversations.
On this site, B.L. has cleverly found an aspect of the business that will engage and intrigue readers, and which encourages audience participation. As it says on the blog:
Ethics Crisis demonstrates that blogs have evolved way beyond pontificating. The next generation of blogs are perfect vehicles for the combination of marketing, industry news, customer-created content and e-commerce.
It’s well worth a look.
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May 6th, 2006 at 12:09 am
thanks sabine! i’m happy to say that the response to Ethics Crisis has been very enthusiastic.
we’re amazed at the confessions, and more astounded at the ratings by readers. it looks like you have to do something really bad for people to say “never acceptable.” That’s a little scary.
absolutely it’s the company website. blog software is remarkably versatile in the hands of a good blog designer. The confessions are intended to add some intrigue and fun to the mix and they are definitely doing that.
SRF specializes in the multilanguage translation of ethics compliance materials and we wanted to join the conversation on the subject of ethics. Doesn’t seem like such a stretch to me.
B.L.
May 6th, 2006 at 6:39 am
B.L.,
Thanks for stopping by. You folks did a great job with this blog.
Maybe it’s due to my background in healthcare, but I interpret “compliance” as much broader than ethics, because there’s so many different regulations to follow, with HIPAA and all. But ethics compliance is certainly one of the most important, for any industry.
You folks could have gone in many different directions with this blog, so you picked one idea and it’s a good one. Focus is important. You found a conversation you wanted to contribute to in a unique way.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Wow, this is good stuff…thanks for pointing out this blog/website Sabine! The concept is great and makes sense in this day and age…I also love the idea of making the website/blog one entity. Congrat to B.L.!