Matt Moore has a great list of tips for companies wanting to encourage corporate blogging:
- Give everyone in your organisation permission to set up their own blogger/typepad account. Ask them to give you a link to their RSS feed when they've done that.
- Give them a list of things they absolutely cannot talk about. Try to make it relatively short. You can't make this list short? Then may be you aren't ready for this yet. If they want to check anything with you then give them that option & respond quickly & decisively.
- Make it clear to their managers that blogging should not be punished - provided people are doing their jobs. If they are not doing their jobs then find out why - don't just blame the blogging.
- Advise them to be nice to people. Remind them that this is in public. "The evil that men do lives after them".
- Advise them to think of 3-4 business-related things that they are passionate about.
- Advise them to find 10 people that blog about each of those things. Look at the posts. Look at the comments fields. Do these people link to each other? What world are they about to step into?
- Let them get on with it. They can work out when they feel ready to step into conversations. They can talk about that with you if they want.
- Read their RSS feeds & give them a bit of encouragement. Be their first audience.
- Only intervene if someone really screws up. You can't handle someone screwing up? Then may be you aren't ready for this yet. Suggest that your bloggers talk to each other about their experiences.
- Don't treat them as another "channel" for messages - they are not a ventriloquist's dummy. But do treat them as conversational partners.
- See who has kept it going after 6 months. Do something nice for them (preferably involving the blog).
Question one is whether they're speaking for themselves, on an external blog, or as part of the company, on a company hosted blog...
Posted by: Frankie Roberto | May 01, 2007 at 10:14 AM
This will come in very handy for my next stage of work!
Posted by: Franka Philip | May 01, 2007 at 06:00 PM
Frankie - I would put them on an external site but make no effort to hide their affiliation to the organisation & then link to them from the organisation's website. Unless they are a C-level exec - in which case a website blog might be appropriate.
Putting people up on the company's website as representatives straight away is too much pressure. Part of the issue is that you want a "safe-fail" strategy as most of those who start blogging will not continue. This may seem wasteful but it is actually more effective than identifying the "chosen ones" & pouring resources into them too early.
What would you do?
Posted by: Matt Moore | May 02, 2007 at 04:17 AM