Glove Girl

QUESTION: What should Lancaster-Webb do about Glove Girl?Bloggers’ opinion can constitute an extremely useful tool for a company’s product or service. The reason for this is that people feel bloggers have no subsequent intention in recommending something. In other words, they do not have the feeling that the blogger is trying to sell them something but that they are otherwise giving their opinion from their own knowledge or experience with the product or service.
In the article “A Blogger in Their Midst”, Lancaster-Webb Medical Supply is living, for the first time, the experience of having a blogger (known as “Glove Girl”) writing about an old product, from the inside of the company (as an employee, but also as an user). The CEO of the firm (Will Somerset) is astonished to learn that there had been a huge demand of this product since she started talking it up on her blog.
After studying the case, I consider Will Somerset would have different things to do with Glove Girl: fire her; hire her to post good opinion articles in her blog about the company and their products; not do anything with her, this being letting her post whatever she wants as she has been doing until now, or letting The Houston’s Clinic hire her.
To know what would be the best solution for the company, we would have to evaluate the pros and cons of all these options. I would automatically discard the idea of firing her, as this would create an awful image and a negative marketing for the company if she ever decided to talk about unfair dismissal on her blog, given her reputation.
On the other hand, I doubt the idea of hiring her to post positive opinions about the company’s product would work effectively on the long run. She might lose her credibility and even become boring and repetitive if her posts deal too often with the same subjects.
This is the reason why Will Somerset also has the possibility of not influencing Glove Girl’s blog, given the good results.