I saw a couple of great posts this morning while looking through my RSS reader about blogosphere best practices. Both posts that caught my eye were about openness in blogging.
Dave Taylor writes about the practice of routinely sharing editorially superfluous personal details on a professional blog. He argues that a great blog targets one specific bit of editorial and doesn’t deviate:
Imagine that you were a well-known business author and you had a blog with the intent purposes of promoting your new book, your speaking gigs, and your consulting business. Blogging about your book, about letters you receive, reviews in the media, and even your experience speaking at different events is all perfect content, continually reaffirming your expertise, credibility and status as an expert.
Now imagine that in the middle of this you pop in a note about how you were really disappointed in the latest Star Wars movie, or had a terrible experience at a local ethnic restaurant. Could be interesting reading, but unless you somehow related it to your book and area of expertise, it’s just noise, just content that’s fighting your other efforts and preventing you from reaching your goal of being widely recognized as a professional in the online world.
He also points out that sharing personal details about sexual orientation, open relationships, religion etc. in a business environment is inappropriate and unprofessional.
I tend to agree with both points. But I’d like to add that sometimes those personal details are relevant to the online conversation. Professionals who are considering entering the blogosphere should remember that a blog that is all work and no play can be pretty dull. The point of having a business blog is to put a human face on the carefully controlled corporate image. It’s possible to be both professional and amiable and I think that’s the key mix that creates a good blogging personality.
On the other end of the openness spectrum, Eric Rice writes about the Linden Labs blog where a well-known agitator has been flat-out banned from commenting. Linden Labs, which owns and moderates the popular online game/social network Second Life, has reserved the right to ban a commenter for any reason at any time. Similar bans have been enforced against other agitators in the past.
Now, Linden owns their blog and their game, and they have the right to exercise whatever arbitrary rules suit their fancy. But that’s not going to be too popular with the Second Life crowd. When your most prominent Second Lifer is Robert “Mr. Openness” Scoble, and you’re engaging in draconian moderation policies, you know that you’ve got impending problems.
One of the scariest parts of business blogging is dealing with comments. It’s scary to open the comment queue and find that someone has a really good point about something you’ve been doing badly or flat-out wrong. But would you rather find that out from a comment on your blog, or when your company suffers major losses because you’ve become out of touch with your customer base? I’d sure prefer the former.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t moderate comments. You have the right to do whatever works for you. That includes not offering comments. But the industry best practice is moderated openness, regardless of how hard dissenting opinions may be to hear
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
steven e. streight aka vaspers the grate 12.11.06 at 7:16 pm
Bravo! I like what I’m reading here. Dave Taylor is making a point that I’ve been ranting about for about 2 years now: don’t pollute your business topic blog with tons of personal trivia.
Some personal details are okay, as you say, you don’t want to be all work and no play. Often a remark now and then about a favorite music band or movie helps make you more human and personalized.
I differ with Dave in that I think a blog that drones on and on about YOUR product and YOUR books and YOUR conference attendance, ad nauseum, is self-serving, Business As Usual boredom.
No matter what you blog about, your own clients and books, or a new movie you saw, be sure to always present the content from a user benefit point of view.
Don’t just hype your seminar. Sell it, but also provide highlights from it, as was done here. I really appreciate all the Blog Business Summit recaps, summaries, and keynote highlights, like from good Jason Calacanis.
Using a blog as a 100% self-promotion tool is so 1950s.
Teresa Valdez Klein 12.11.06 at 7:33 pm
Vaspers: I couldn’t agree more. Obviously, businesses launch company blogs in their own self-interest. But acting in your own self-interest in the blogosphere doesn’t automatically translate to constant self-plugging without any value add for the reader. Rather, taking a more laid-back approach that leaves room to respect the competition and talk plainly to your customer base is the ultimate business blogging approach.
Prokofy Neva 01.07.07 at 8:44 pm
What’s Orwellian about the Linden Blob, as we call it (because of its large, white shapelessness) is that even though I’m now banned from commenting on it, thousands of others who have written really outrageous personal attacks and really cranky nasties about the Lindens remain. I’ve always been supportive, and among the higher tier payers, but I’m critical of Linden. Still, I have never approached anything near the juvenile antics of some of their regulars who swear and curse at them regularly; when they take action against someone like me it’s more heavily political.
The really wierd part of all of it is my controversial posts remain untouched. They’re there for anyone to read, and many commented on them and shared the same thoughts.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/06/town-hall-with-cory-linden-dec-20-at-230pm-pst/
Now…here’s where it gets even UBER wierd. Cory Linden, to whom I originally directed my questions and comments (it was a prep thread for a townhall meeting with him about technology), read out my question in the town hall, said it was “excellent,” proceeded to answer it in full, and comment thoughtfully that you can’t send abusive reverse-engineers to the “dark nets,” you have to mitigate them through various tools and you can’t get into an arms race. Any TOS invocation against them and their antics is a stop-gap.
So…the person who rails against their immoral griefing is the one sent to the “dark nets” lol.
Ultimately, I think businesses and their blogs have to be under the rule of law, just like governments. They’re not obliged to supply the implementation of the First Amendment to all and sundry. But they are probably better off creating a climate of free expression, even robust and sharp criticism of their products or services. If they can’t hear and tolerate it that way, where it disappears below the fold on the next day’s blog, they’ll feel it bite more on the bottom line. Blogs need to be even-handed and have clear rules about their commentary. LL doesn’t have a rule on their blog that you are banned permanently for “offenses” — they say your offensive remarks will merely be deleted.
But mine remain.
Go know!