Does your company support employee blogging?

To blog or not to blog?  That is the question. 

Do you know a company still having this debate? (are YOU a company still having this debate?)

Beyond the borders of companies that have embraced communities, I hear this debate about blogging all the time.  There are usually a couple of common objections to employee blogging:

1)  Productivity – My employees have full time jobs, I can’t afford to have them out blogging.

2)  Quality – Are you crazy – content unscrubbed by marketing?

3)  Legal – Are you crazy – content unscrubbed by legal?

4)  Over transparency?

Just so we’ve covered it, let’s talk briefly about these objections.  The first two are largely emotional, but the 3rd can really stop you in your tracks.  The 4th is one you need to debate internally and be intentional about.

Productivity:  How to even begin with this legacy thinking?  What could possibly be more important than having your employees engage in conversations with the people that use your products and/or services.  Are you kidding me?  I’m keeping this one simple, but I can’t believe how much I’ve heard this.  If this sounds familiar, I’m sorry – maybe my post on insights can help.  I’m actually waiting to be challenged on this one in my own role – I will let you know if it happens.  I know people will wonder, how can Sean have time to do all this blogging AND his day job with driving community work at Microsoft?  Perhaps some of my own employees may even wonder?  My simple response is the same…what is more important than the insights I can gather externally to help guide our thinking around communities.  How do you ensure you step out of silo’d thinking that assumes we already know what we need to know?  This is part of my “thinking time” – something everyone, especially business leaders, should make sure they do more of.

Quality:  Fair enough, but unrealistic.  The world is already authoring content about you, your products, your policies, etc and search engines are blurring the source of who authored it.  You need to participate in this.  You have an opportunity here to change and personalize your “corporate voice.”  This is nothing but positive.  Stop scrubbing content and using corporate marketing “speak.”  It’s time for your customers to really know you, which means knowing your people.  Let go….. Further, there is an economic case here the “bean counters” (sorry finance:)) will like.  Depending on the business you’re in, authoring content is a tough part of the business.  There are always gaps, you can’t localize fast enough.  It doesn’t cover a broad enough set of topics.  It’s written for the wrong type of user.  By allowing blogging, more of your employees from much more diverse perspectives can participate in this creation.  You’re taking the first step to open sourcing your content and knowledge – (don’t get excited, your not done…you have to push this farthur to user to user voices embraced on your properties). 

Legal:  This is the toughest one…and legal is not totally wrong.  Do not do this without legal, that would be a serious mistake.  But, remember, the job of legal (my opinion) is to tell you HOW to do things…not just to tell you NOT to do things!!  See the assumptive close for a refresher.  They have genuine concerns about how IP gets shared and how IP is gathered.  What outward facing guidance is “vetted” (you indemnify) and what is user to user advice.  These issues need to be worked through, but the point is they are resolvable.

Over transparency:  Is there such a thing as too much transparency?  Actually, yes there is.  Remember, you may know the difference between brain storming and commitments, but your readers may not.  Talking about futures when futures are uncertain may create implied expectations that you simply cannot meet.  This is unfair to you and unfair to your users.  This doesn’t mean you can’t talk about futures, but you need to be smart about this and not make implied commitments that you can’t deliver (your company can’t deliver).  In being more transparent, you will gain the trust of your users, but implied commits you can’t deliver leads to distrust – so discuss openly inside your organization what those guidelines need to be and then live with the policy.

Note:  For tips to overcome, go back to Convincing the Unconverted, Parts 1 -4.

I came across many helpful links on guides/tips for corporate blogging on the Diva Marketing Blog I wanted to share…Thanks Diva!!

Also, a “shout out” to Shel at a shel of my former self who also posted this week on the flaws and risks of corporate blogging.  Appropriate props to those he also cross referenced:  Kami Huyse and Randish who have lots of great insights on this topic.   Interesting the topic struck each of us around the same time.

Any of this sound familiar?  What objections do you hear? 

Sean

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