Increasing “intimacy” between your company and your customers has a lot of positives: You can make better products and provide better services, which your newly vibrant customer community is more likely to advocate. But, this takes a degree of organizational wherewithal and self confidence that not everyone seems to have in abundance. It seems to be much easier for small to medium size organizations to take the plunge, and start spinning up a corporate blog roll (nice examples here, here and here). Good corporate blog rolls allow staff blogs to operate outside of the marketing or recruiting teams - social media, as a platform, isn’t just for selling - it’s to create an open marketplace of ideas (not all of which might be flattering to an organization).
But, when corporate blogging goes bad, the results can be more then stiff - they can turn off customers, or, even worse, be ignored. This seems to occur when large organizations what to harness the marketing potential of social media, but otherwise only pay it lip service. Examples include corporate blogs that clearly have been edited by the legal or marketing department, and blogs that aggressively moderate comments - removing unflattering content. Only allowing blogs that have a voice from upon high - Cx0s, etc., and not line employees, is also a problem.
I won’t name any specific offenders, but if you look at my own industry - consulting - there are a few. To solve for this problem, companies need to a create a sound public blogging policy, acknowledging the contribution of the individual, stating that employees are entitled to their opinions, and emphasizing that the enterprise can only benefit from allowing a diversity of opinions to flourish. Without this, corporate “blogs” will always seem artificial and of limited value.
Companies that do this right, and create an employee blogging “bill of rights”, will see employees generate valuable content, and offer thought leadership in their fields. Combine a permissive policy with a slick enterprise blogging platform , and you’ll really start to see things happen.
7 responses so far ↓
1 e2.0h lawyer // Feb 17, 2008 at 6:35 pm
As a lawyer, I see the positives to corporate blogging, but what I see more clearly is the liability. As Nicholas Carr has stated the potential risks might outway the potential gains. I think there needs to be some degree of top down control on corporate blogging. Personally, if I have built a company from the ground up, I do not want my company’s image tarnished by an off-the-wall employee who feels that this right to free speech is more important than my company’s image. This is especially true in the context of his corporate-sponsored blog. I like’s Carr’s last piece of advice: “Call in the lawyers. I hate to say it, but if you’re allowing your employees to blog on your dime, you’re liable for what they write. Better safe than sued.”
2 Paul Dunay // Feb 17, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Good post Jay
I wanted to point out a recent podcast I did with Andy Sernovitz and Sean O’Driscoll on the Blog Council which was created to discuss issues for Corporate blogs
you can check out the podcast here
http://buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com/2008/02/blogcouncilorg-solving-challenges-of.html
3 Jay Hariani // Feb 18, 2008 at 12:19 am
@e2.0h lawyer - Carr has an interesting perspective - but I disagree - dialoguing with the marketplace is more then ideology. A company’s ability to do it, and do it well, will become increasingly demanded by customers.
4 Nate Nash // Feb 18, 2008 at 1:55 pm
@Jay - Totally agree (shocker). Corporate blogs should not be a press release by a different name. And as far as the lawyers are concerned, as a consumer I would rather buy products from a company who fires employees who fly off the handle in a public forum, that wonder what moron is hiding behind the kid gloves of lawyerly redlining.
Expose your workforce to the larger room. Especially in consulting. If no one wants to pay for your star blogger, perhaps he shouldn’t be billed at 5k/day.
5 Jay Hariani // Feb 18, 2008 at 11:36 pm
@Paul - Thanks, I’ll check out the podcast. Good to know that the issues and polices around corporate blogging are being tackled head on.
@Nate - Absolutely. As a client, I’d be much more likely to pay top dollar for a resource that was publically recognized as a leader in her field (as much as I’d like to take account rep’s word for it) :)!
6 Does Iceland Export Bananas? // Feb 24, 2008 at 1:44 pm
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7 Transparent Development – Part Deux // Jun 2, 2008 at 5:28 pm
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