Corporate blogging

Lenn Pryor at Microsoft and Matthew Oliphant from Business Logs are talking about Corporate Blogging: Strategy and Policy at the Blog Business Summit. The following are my notes from their presentation and the ensuing discussion:

Why should a company allow blogging?

• You can't afford not to have a dialogue with your customers
• ride the Cluetrain
  • markets are conversations
  • internet has sped up the pace of conversation
  • conversation is happening with or without you
• product  and customer service agility
• living feedback loop
• humanization of your company
• react to good news, react to bad news

A corporate blog is about change management and risk management. More openness and more interaction with your customers means change (to the corporate culture and the way you do things) and risk. The company has to be prepared to be an adult; to take criticism and feedback. You're going to take some lumps. But it's like AA, admitting that you're an addict. Corporate leadership needs to admit that the conversation needs to happen in order to grow and improve.

Corporate blogging is not about installing a platform and pressing Go. It takes a change in most aspects of the organization.

Lenn presents the basic guidelines for Microsoft bloggers:

• Be smart.
• Respect existing confidedntiality agreements
• Don't break news, don't disclose confidential info
• be cautious with 3rd party info
• Respect prior employers
• Identify yourself
• Be cautious in how you offer support and advice. If you're wrong, the company can be held legally liable for damages.
• Speak for yourself
• Think about reactions before you hit 'post.' Think about how the post would look on the front page of a national newspaper.

Don't make laundry lists of rules, because it gets too confusing. There's no official "policy" on blogging at Microsoft. Don't be overly prescriptive; let your employees be adults. There's a level of trust that must take place.

Internal Blogging:
Use blogging as a tool for project management. It's a good thing to start internally, because there's greater leeway in what you can do. Behind the firewall you've got greater acceptance for risk and failure.

External Blogging:

• Blogging supports Reputation, one of the three pillars of a company (the other two being Financial and Operational).
• Find a leader who can champion blogging and who reflects the values of the company.
• Passion sells, both internally and externally.
• The voice of your bloggers become part of your brand. Let them use their own voice for it will sound more real and honest.
• The goal is to build relationships and communicate the values of the company. Customers want to know the people behind the company. That's why you shouldn't outsource blogging.
  
  • However, it's quite valid to hire blog consultants to coach your team, write posts for a period of time and then transition out.
• Customers are supportive of companies that have a great deal of transparency, and opening up the inner workings of your company is a way to build trust, support and forgiveness.
• Good bloggers can come from the lowest rungs of the customer support team, all the way up to the executive level.
• Start an internal blog or wiki to preview topics and discuss why these topics should or should not be shared on the public blog.
• Reward good bloggers at paycheck time, if they're effective evangelists for your company.
• Everyone neeeds to know your company's guidelines for speaking about company topics in public. If an employee gets fired for blogging without consenting to the blogging policy, they have the right to sue for their salary.

Oooh, good last question from the audience: Since Scoble doesn't blog on company time, would it be ok for him to accept money from a "tip jar?" Lenn hesitates, and...  sorry, we're out of time. Really good issue that needs to be addressed, because it makes a lot of sense.

Comments

[-b-]

On the Scoble tip jar, use that to buy him a Mac Mini.

[jbr]

Hey Jennifer, I am new to your blog. Came across it via the Tom Peters blog. Nice to see a UT grad in the blogosphere.

Besides project management, a very useful function of the internal corporate blog is as a corp communication tool. Instead of blanket emails, the internal blog can be used for mass messages. Along with eliminating email traffic, a "comment on" blog can allow people to actually discuss/clarify a corp wide message. This can be useful for the employees and can help management gauge the reception of the message.

Additionally, a smart company will use a blog to save money normally spent on internal mass communication conference calls. Using a good audio recording system and a "podcast" approach, the smart company will enable employees to access the corp blog to listen to the recorded message. Again, with a "comment on" blog, employees can weigh in with opinions/questions and the conf call speaker can respond accordingly. This should improve the quality and depth of questions/answers that can be superficial in a "live" call.

These are just two example of other uses for internal blogs. At some point, I may list the many other uses. Anyway, I am pushing a internal blog at my company and it's been a long journey so far.

jbr

[david]

Jennifer, this is really useful information, thanks.

The basic guidelines you discuss seem critical to the successful corporate adoption of blogs. Hopefully these will develop and become more codified over the coming months and years.

In addition to what you listed, it seems very important that corporations make the effort to ensure that the content on their blogs is written in an authentic, personal voice, rather than a stifled corporate voice.

The company at which I work, EchoDitto (www.echoditto.com) wrote the Best Practices for Successful Blogging (www.echoditto.com/best/blogging). The Best Practices stresses the importance of an authentic, personal voice in creating a successful blog.

Corporations should thwart impulses to provide blog posts in the corporate “press release” voice, and should actively cultivate personal dialogue on their blogs. If corporate blogs are aware of the Best Practices and adopt an authentic, personal voice, then they will meet far greater successful

[Dave]

I've been blogging since last August, but blogging has been on my radar screen since at least '01. My posts are meant to provoke thought. The question I get asked however, is how can blogging help my business? Or how should I blog? So, I guess we all must be ambassadors to this great sport. I decided to build a file to reference when I am asked these questions. And...

I started with this post of yours Jennifer. Thanks for your inspiration!

[Michele Miller]

Wow, Jennifer - you take copious notes! Thanks for sharing all of this -- just wish I could have been there in person. Sounds like a very dynamic conference!