Robert Scoble and I were discussing the sessions and the general editorial game plan for our upcoming Blog Business Summit, and he suggested adopting a theme/tagline for the conference of “Getting Past the Fear”.
Based on many conversations I’ve had over the past few moths, it’s clear that the fear is real. Many individuals and organizations are fearful of how competitive/outsider blogs might negatively affect their businesses — yet they are probably the most apprehensive about employee blogging.
My position is that if your company is fearful of employee blogging you can (and should!) begin to “blog without blogging”. Here are the strata of short-term approaches to corporate blogging that I see:
1) Must do: Monitoring the blogs and comments, and responding via email or comments. (No blogging here, and presents little to no downside risk)
2) Should do: Sponsoring and/or hosting blogs that have editorial that appeals to your customers/potential customers. (Does not require the company to blog, and presents little to no downside risk)
3) Might do: Maintaining and populating one or more blogs that discuss what the company or employees are doing. (Blogging required, needs careful thought and execution to minimize risk)
The third option seems to be getting much of the attention these days, yet is certainly the move that requires the most risk, attention, and effort. Number one and two are almost completely risk free, yet can reap huge dividends for any business that invests the time and money. It also can act as a training ground for the eventual move into a customer dialog weblog (which I suspect will be a mandatory move for most over the long term).
Naturally, we’ll be covering how to optimize all three approaches at the August Blog Business Summit.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Seamus Phan 06.27.05 at 4:42 pm
Most of the companies in Asia seem to be warming up to options 1 and 2, since they are also, in my opinion, risk free, and can permeate to more readers quickly. Option 3 seems to touch on sensitive nerves of not only IT administrators/managers over here, but also top managers concerned about accountability, compliance, and risk management.
Most progressive corporations adopting business blogs in Asia, seem to be those with a tightly knit closed loop community, such as research, science, academia, and departments within organizations.
Ed Deevy 06.28.05 at 6:46 am
For more than two decades I’ve been trying to convince executives to share business information with front-line employees. LET EMPLOYEES KEEP SCORE was one of the ideas I tried to get accross in a 1995 book. But the CULTURE of many organizations does not allow this to happen. This is one of the fears that will have to be addressed if blogging is to be embraced as a tool for facilitating internal communication. Let me add that there is a similar fear of sharing information with customers.
Overcoming these fears is no small challenge!
Lynann Bradbury 07.06.05 at 10:46 am
This is a great topic for the Blog Business Summit, especially if you take it down to the personal and visceral level. Because the nature of blogs requires conveying a personal, authentic POV, it’s not just about sharing business information, it’s about exposing yourself. For CEOs and other business execs whose words have often been written or scrubbed by others, it can be scarey to hold a public debate without a safety net. Would be interesting to do a survey of CEOs to truly find out why they don’t blog and what would allow them to overcome the fear.
Paul Chaney 07.26.05 at 3:41 pm
Susie Gardner and I are going to Asia (Singapore) in September to do a first-ever (so we understand) business blogging seminar speaking to corporate execs. The host company hopes to have 150 or so attendees. We’re doing a full two days covering everything from blogging basics to CEOs blogs to marketing, you name it.
We’re both very excited about the possibilities this has for opening Asia to business blogging, i.e. #3 above.