Discussing a Company's Online Communication

Everyone is online today, as I am sure you know since you are currently reading this online. As a result, companies and businesses today must maintain a positive and thoughtful online presence using effective communication in order to reach the largest audience available: the internet. As someone who enjoys to play video games here and there in his spare time, I decided to look into a gaming company which I am quite familiar with: Blizzard Entertainment. I already follow some of their accounts on social media, so I had a decent idea of what to expect going into this.

Image from Wikipedia who extracted it from blizzard.com

First, I decided to start by looking at their official webpage, blizzard.com. At a glance, their page in nicely structured, simplistic, and user friendly. The main page mostly focuses on the games, which makes sense. The top of the page has a rotating featured section showcasing current events and sales happening in their various games. The middle of the page showcases all of their games as well as the platforms that they can be played on. Clicking on individual games brings you to webpages dedicated to those games if you want to find out more. There is also a plug for their launcher, Battle.net, which allows you to play the games. The bottom of the page is standard for company webpages, containing things like a career page, about page, contact information, copyright information, etc. This page is clearly laid out to market their products, with the focus being on their games. I think it is effective, as you can easily see what games are on sale as well as exclusive offers on those games. You can easily find an about page as well as a news page that contains many articles. There are numerous articles for each of their titles every day, so it is clear that they communicate often with the fans of their games. My only critique is that there are very few articles on the company itself, with the last one posted back in January of this year. 

Screenshot of their webpage

Next, I decided to visit Blizzard's LinkedIn page. It is professionally laid out and focuses on job openings, as you would expect. The part that stood out to me the most was the section titled "Life at Blizzard Entertainment" which had pictures showing the employees having fun at work. This section gives a positive impression of Blizzard's online presence, showing that they want to appear to be a fun place to work. Lastly, I visited their Twitter page. What I noticed is that the actual Blizzard account did not tweet much, but instead retweeted posts from the accounts representing their various games. These accounts posted several times a day, often to interact with their fans, update them on upcoming changes to the game, and even post silly videos related to their game. As a result, these accounts came across as friendly and lively, encouraging people to interact and take part in the fun, which I think is the perfect vibe for a video game account. 

From Blizzard's LinkedIn

An example of Blizzard interacting with their fans through one of the game accounts on Twitter

All in all, Blizzard did a wonderful job communicating to and with their consumers about their products. However, I feel they put all of their focus into their games and almost none into the company itself. Between the infrequent articles on the company and posts on their main social media account, I think they could better communicate what is actually going on in the company itself, especially considering some of the scandals Blizzard has faced in the past, such as cases of sexual harassment. Perhaps more frequent communications from the company itself, like on how they might be working to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, would create more confidence and goodwill towards the company.