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As regular readers of this Blawg know, in a 5-part series on “Firing Bloggers,” I’ve written extensively about employee bloggers and the troubles they’ve seen.
Well, folks, I’m ready to turn my back on that subject and take the employer-blogger relations issue where it needs to go. So from now on, this is the topic:
How to attract and retain employee-bloggers and use their talents and blogging to benefit the business.
Even if I have to write about another fired blogger, it will be from the perspective of what the company may have lost when this occurred and whether it was avoidable.
(Perhaps I’ve already expressed my feelings on that quite well, but I think that more clearly taking the focus off the justification for firing and putting it on the potential benefits of employee blogging will be putting things in a more positive light — which is needed.)
In this regard, I literally have a new chapter for you to read (written by someone else, and fascinating). Also some new developments in a story I previously covered and more resources on corporate blogging policies.
The chapter is part of a book being written open source — posted on a blog, with comments taken into account in the editing process.
The blog is The Red Couch; Shel Israel’s and Robert Scoble’s business blogging book is being built here.
Chapter 2, entitled “Souls of the Borg” is here. It’s a fascinating history of blogging at Microsoft, and it leads off with this apt quote from a great British jurist:
[Corporations] cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate[d] for they have no souls.
—Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)
A favorite sound bite:
Microsoft has experienced a vast softening of its image. People, including journalists, have a lot more information about Microsoft now. Perhaps more significant . . . has been the impact on employee morale, and the company’s ability to attract new talent.
I also discovered that the Red Couch blog is fantastic, and I will monitor it on bloglines.
A couple of other good posts I found on that blog are:
Ahh, the marketers are starting blogs without realizing why blogs have power. . . .
Read it if you’re thinking about starting a “corporate blog.”
“Corporate Blog Tip #4 and #5 (demonstrate your passion and authority)”:
[Tip #4:] “How do you show your passion? Post often.” . . .Tip #5: demonstrate your authority.
If you’re a plumber, show off how to do plumbing. If you’re an automaker, demonstrate that you know something about making autos.
That isn’t as easy as it sounds, but start with showing us how it’s done. Look at the English Cut blog.
It is a blog by a company that makes suits. It is very authoritative. Has pictures. Demonstrates that they know what they are doing.
Look at that suit blog. It is so wondeful that it makes me fantasize that I had the time and money to fly to London tomorrow and have this guy fit me for a custom suit. (And the thought of buying a custom suit never once occurred to me before — even in St. Louis. I fit a 44 Regular just fine off the rack, and I wear suits as little as possible.)
That site’s truly a window into a niche business. You can do it for yours too. I’ll take it over a corporate website any day.
(And, since I love idioms, I love this post, with a photo illustrating the origin of “no strings attached”
My blogging-buddy up north in Toronto, Michael Fitzgibbon, in his Thoughts from a Management Lawyer blog, totally scooped me on this next item.
It’s a follow-up to the story of the Thomas Nelson Publishers’ blogging policy, which I wrote about here: “Developing corporate blogging policy; lawyers and publishers take on the challenge.”
In his post “Still More on Corporate Blogging Policies,” Michael links to the second draft of the Nelson policy, which stripped down the legalese, as I — and presumably others — recommended. Much better. I agree with Michael’s comments on the changes.
Finally, Michael’s post includes links to some other corporate blogging policies to check out.
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Blogs are great for personal branding and opinion making, but it’s hard to keep them interesting without a little bit of salacious gossip or confidential information.
To be successful, they have to serve a purpose or stimulate - and business blogging is very hard to quantify in terms of ROI. The damage of a loose-lipped blogger is very apparent.
I don’t know if my company would be happy or not with my blogs - which is why they are semi-anonymous. The value in one would be apparent if the growth of recruiting blogs continues - we’d get candidates in a tight market.
The problem is how could a company allow one person to blog and not all of them? And how can you trust people to not write or link, or otherwise leave corporation damaging information when we know that they are going to.
Safer to ban it all, or turn a blind eye.
Great linking Mondays by the way. Big fan.