DETROIT - By all accounts, General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz's blog is doing its job.

It's short, snappy, has frequent posts and is interactive, just what experts say a blog should be.

At http://fastlane.gmblogs.com, Lutz addresses reader concerns and criticisms on vehicles and the company. He also uses it to promote new products and technology. Reader posts show a dialogue happening between the public and GM.

In a Feb. 21 post, Lutz used his blog to defend himself after he was criticized for calling global warming "a total crock."

"An offhand comment I made recently about the concept of global warming seems to have a lot of people heated, and it's spreading through the Internet like ragweed. . . . General Motors is dedicated to the removal of cars and trucks from the environmental equation, period. And, believe it or don't: So am I!"

Started in 2005, Lutz's "Fast-Lane" blog is an example of what's become common practice in corporate America and with company executives.

As of February, www.thenewpr.com, which tracks corporate blog- ging, counted 277 known blogs authored by chief executives or people in organizational leadership positions.

Experts say blogs help disseminate a company's message, answer public criticism and develop a relationship between the public and the company's most visible figures.

Blogs, because they get updated frequently, also boost a company's ranking in search engines, said John Cass, author of "Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging."

Corporate-blogging critics say CEOs should tend to more important business - such as running the company - and leave messages to the public relations staff.

Others say a poorly written or neglected blog with infrequent entries can leave a visitor with a poorer image of the company, such as laziness.

"If you say, ‘Check in every Tuesday and Friday,' there better be something there or people are going to write you off," said Mark Young, chairman of the Redford Township, Mich., marketing company Western Creative, who writes his company blog and advises company executives on blogging.

Other corporate chiefs are embracing blogs.

Mark Greiner, a senior vice president of the Grand Rapids, Mich., furniture giant Steelcase, uses his blog (http://blog.steelcase.com) to talk about work spaces, leadership and his current read.

Detroit employment attorney Patricia Nemeth warned that anything a company puts on a blog should be given serious scrutiny before it's posted.

"Words can be cut and pasted and used elsewhere against you," Nemeth said.

PSEUDONYM HIGH JINKS

Corporate blogs have gone through some growing pains. Chief executives and employees have used pseudonyms to attack critics or defend their company on forums. Companies have created blogs meant to look as if they were started by fans of their products.

The highest-profile case of a CEO-blogging faux pas involved Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.

Mackey was exposed by the Wall Street Journal last summer for using a pseudonym to post anonymously for eight years on a Yahoo Finance forum, in which he cheered Whole Foods and critiqued his competitor Wild Oats, which Whole Foods ended up acquiring.

Mackey tried to defend himself on his company blog after he was outed but stopped blogging when his board told him to stop while the Federal Trade Commission considered the pending purchase.

Mackey resumed blogging last month, saying he made a mistake in judgment but defending his right to express his opinion.
DETROIT FREE PRESS