RSC Partners, Inc.

Starwood Hotels has a new blog aimed at its preferred guests: www.thelobby.com. Unlike most corporate blogs TheLobby isn’t just an awkard restatement of corporate press releases. It tries– and mostly succeeds– to be engaging and conversational in a manner that will build a sustained readership. But that hasn’t stopped the critics.

Commenting in a Wall Street Journal article, Todd Copilevitz, a “digital marketing consultant,” laments the lack of reader comments on the site: “Blogs are not an environment where you just hold forth an opinion and don’t accept feedback… You have to have your wits about you to understand it’s not the same old PR machine.”

Mr. Copilevitz is right that a blog is not “the same old PR machine” but there are other ways to establish a relationship with readers than through comments.

TheLobby has a conversational tone that resonates with readers. Its authors have distinct voices and they create a discussion by linking to other blogs (unlike some blogs like the Huffington Post).

On the whole, we think TheLobby isn’t a bad corporate blog and we’d like to see more companies use the medium to communicate with their customers.

Starwood’s Web Log Caters To Loyalty [Wall Street Journal]