Well, it isn’t really the question for me as my business is largely about selling our clients on the benefits of business blogs or at least actively engaging the blogging community.
I still encounter resistance on almost a daily basis though. Here are the frequently asked questions and concerns that get posed to me when recommending a blog strategy:
What if a staff member posts something on the blog that is commercially sensitive?
A valid concern, however, what happens if a staff member sent something commercially sensitive by email? Are you going to monitor and read every single message they send out? Many, many people are unaware of the intensely insecure nature of email. Standard email messages are completely unencrypted and exceptionally easy to intercept. A single email message will generally get copied into log files on numerous mail servers around the world. The little button in Outlook that lets you recall a message, is essentially a ruse. You can’t actually recall or delete an email after it is sent.
My point? You have to trust your staff to be sensible the same way you trust them with a host of other mediums that can be used to communicate with the world. You can always have an internal blog or wiki if it is to be used for highly sensitive information, that’s what we do.
What if nobody posts anything?
You need to sell blogging to the people whom you want to be involved in the company and have some champions who will lead the way. One thing I noticed is that the guys in my team would send interesting links and information they had found to the all staff email list. I always just reply and tell them to blog it instead. I think all companies will be pleasantly surprised at the depth and breadth of knowledge available within their people. To be able to easily harness and share this knowledge is so incredibly powerful.
What is someone posts a critical comment?
This requires a complete shift in corporate thinking. Traditionally companies would shy away from publicly embarrassing issues and retain expensive PR spin doctors to deal with issues like this. I’ve previously posted about how Dell, in the face of growing customer dissatisfaction and criticism from the media, has embraced blogs and other Web 2.0 initiatives to try and create a far greater level of transparency with their market. There’s is an excellent case study of how conversations and dialogue are better than dealing with criticism in media that you have no control over. If you read my post on CEO blogs, I conclude that the most important thing is to deal with the comments and keep your blog active rather than shy away from it if things are going the way you want. Charles Dunstone at The Carphone Warehouse learnt that the hard way.
Another example, is low cost operator Southwest Airlines in the US, who currently have an unassigned seating policy on their flights. They posted on their blog that they were thinking of moving to assigned seating. They were overwhelmed with comments in response from their customers. The verdict was undeniably that this would be a “New Coke” scale tragedy if they were to proceed. All this within a matter of hours.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, blogging in the business environment, especially if you are the technology or communications business, should be a part of your marcomms strategy. If you are targeting the US market, then you should take this even more seriously. If you look at the number of Fortune 500 tech companies with blog strategies, the list is long and distinguished.
Technorati Tags: blogs, cgm, consumer generated media
