Common Craft Blog
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
By leelefever on August 07, 2003 - 11:39am
A visitor recently left a comment here that I'd like to respond to as an entry:
Your idea here about blogs on corporate sites is certainly an interesting one. It would seem that this is something of an area of expertise for you. Would you care to ellaborate a little more about what this might look like? For instance, how might a large company (such as GE, let's say) incorporate and make use of a blog on their corporate site?
I always love these kinds of requests. Overall, I am a believer in the power of weblogs. At the bottom of this article, I've provided some links to other folks whose ideas and thoughts on this subject I respect.
I see two possibilities for businesses to use Weblogs: Internally and Externally
1. Intranet-based Internal Weblogs: I'd like to provide this example in terms of my own experience. I was an online community manager for three years in a corporation and here is how I would have used an internal Weblog...
Every day, I saw every message that was posted to the online community, I was constantly modifying and customizing the site, I was working with various departments, managers and members, I was researching tools, I was making mistakes and needing help.
This whole time- few knew what I actually did. My colleagues saw the community as something that works- but something they knew little about, and had no way to learn or keep up over time. I think this is true for most jobs.
In retrospect- a Weblog could have been extremely valuable to me and the company. Using a Weblog, I could chronicle the daily activities, learnings, experiences and developments of the community. As the community grew and interest spread, the Weblog could have become the best single resource for understanding the internal workings of the community, why it works, what we'd learned, what the manager does, what the members think, etc. I could have reserved 30 minutes a day to post what I'm thinking, doing, learning.
Internally, I think internal Weblogs can work to accumulate knowledge that is often left undiscovered. The key is how easy it has become to update a web site via new Weblog tools- it's been too hard in the past. Thanks to new tools, a person can spread their knowledge via a website very quickly and easily- creating a dynamic and informative resource.
2. External Weblogs: While the tool and concept is the same, I think external Weblogs are a different animal for businesses. The basic reason is how they represent a divergence from traditional Marketing. Traditionally, I think Marketing wants to "control the message" and build loyalty and awareness via branding- which does work.
However, Weblogs offer an opportunity to break away from controlling the message and allow businesses to build relationships via people with real voices on a web site- voices that represent the brand and the message in new ways.
Here's something I believe: Loyalty is what every business needs and loyalty comes from earned trust. Now, I also believe that people will trust other people before they trust a company. So, to help build loyalty via a website, businesses can use resources like Weblogs and online communities to build trust by letting customers build trusting relationships with people inside the business- not just a brand or a carefully crafted message.
How?
Well, we're seeing new examples all the time. If I were running a company- here is how I'd do it... This example might not be as appropriate for something like GE, but I hope it serves as a good example.
1. I would find someone (or mutiple people) in the company who has a great record of connecting with customers. Maybe it's not a VP or Marketing person- but someone with a personality that customers seem to like. It would need to be someone who knows the organization and embodies the culture and attitude of the organization and is comfortable communicating electronically.
2. I would set up some basic guidelines for posting in the Weblog. No trade secrets, competitive information, no secret future plans- Marketing Communications should know what not to talk about...
3. I would set up what is good to talk about- and this will be hard to grasp. I'd encourage personal anecdotes, random stories and pictures from the office, observations about the industry, references to the company in the news, references to upcoming events, random highlights, employee profiles, clean jokes etc.
4. Create a rule: No editing of Weblog posts by Executives. The company has to trust the person enough to let them be themselves and write in their own style. If you edit- you're missing the point. This will be hard.
5. In the beginning, I'd make the Weblog a less obvious part of the site. Let visitors find it, but don't promote it on the front page for a while. Let it develop and let the person find their voice. Once the Weblog develops, there may be an opportunity to make it more obvious and perhaps think of it as a part of the front page.
6. Once (if) it become valuable, make it more accessible, offer email subscriptions, promote it actively, link to other related Weblogs, have fun.
These are just my speculations on how it might work. Below I've provided some examples and links to others...
Other perspectives...
ReachCustomerOnline.com: What is a Weblog? Are they Useful to Business?
Dave Pollard's Business and Weblog Links
Link to an internal post containing links to resources by John Robb of Userland Software.
Business Blogs:
SixApart's Six Log- Makers of Movable Type
Up2Speed.com keeps a growing list of business Weblogs.
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
Good points here. We should avoid being overly optimistic, though, about the transformative power any new technology in the business. How many other products or technologies were supposed to do great things, but didn't?
The appeal of blogs is really what scares businesses: easy publishing to lots of readers. As you mention, ease of use is what's driven people to use blogs, but that ease of use can really be a liability to big companies. I worked with a CMS at a large corporation that was so hard to use I had seasoned programmers literally in tears at having to update a web page. The company had no reason to fix the problem, since all web publishing was consolidated in the small group of people who'd learned this CMS.
That's a really hard thing to get past. Your ideas for "basic guidelines" or "simple rules" or even "no editing by executives" are exactly the opposite of how most companies want to run their business. It's probably impossible to change that. Macromedia's a good example of successful corporate blogs: the company doesn't host the sites, doesn't edit the posts, and trusts their employees to communicate with customers. That's exceedingly rare.
Internal blogs might suffer from some of the same issues. In many large companies, no one wants to "stick thier head up" by publishing too often or too noisily. That, plus simple laziness and a dislike of new procedures or new technologies will keep many people from the "30 minutes a day" of posting you mention. For many people, writing every day is a chore, and publishing to the web isn't a priority. As with any content management or KM tools, we should count on only a small minority of users voluntarily participating.
I'm working on my first real corporate blogging project with a client now. I think they're taking a good approach, not too different from what you've suggested. It's an internal site, used by no more than 100 readers and probably 20 authors. It's an incremental step from their current email-list method of distributing those authors' writings, and it's being set up quietly, with reasonable expectations, and without the IT department's involvement.
It occurs to me that a good "step zero" to a corporate blogging project would be not only to look at how knowledge is shared in a company (or sent to customers) but to encourage employees to start participating in and actively reading existing blogs.
For example, have people in your department start reading blogs in your field and emailing (or even just mentioning) good links to each other. Start reading blogs where conversations are already going on about your product or service (you'd be amazed at how ignorant companies are at the communities their customers have already built). Start leaving comments on other blogs. Build an interest by participating first, and you might be able to drive interest in creating a business blog for a company.
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
Thanks for the comments Andrew. You know, I've always been an overly optimistic person about most things in my life and it certainly crosses over into my work. I am a believer.
I like your point about encouraging people in an organization to check out blogs as a starting point. I'm hoping that my site will give some folks a positive example that will help them crystalize a vision of how weblogs can help their site/organization. It's just so new- and I agree that it takes participation to truly see the value.
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
Good ideas. Question - What would you say to an exec who insists that a subject-matter expert and/or the Marcomm director has to OK everything before it's posted? (I worked on a knowledgebase where that was the case and it slowed everything down to near-standstill.) Also - can you find a link to the Macromedia weblog? I couldn't find it on their site.
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
Hi Fran!
Good question! I've been thinking about it and I may just have to do an entry based on your question in a day or two. I'll report bach here when I do.
BTW, here's a link to an "aggregator" of Macromedia Weblogs
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
In the end, blogs, and their usefulness as a marketing tool, are only as good at their content. "Someone who didn’t have anything to say before he or she had a blog is not going to have anything to say after they have one," Coudal says. "Blogs are very democratic, but people who are doing the best work, either in the independent web publishing of content or in commercial publishing, are generating the greatest following."
Frieda from Lucerna, Switzerland
http://www.success-biz-replica.com
How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business
Actually, blogs do solve the problem of people not wanting to "stick their heads out". With blogs (like MovableType, for instance), you can easily give employees the freedom to create their own blogs using (this is the important bit) "nicknames" of their choice. Offer identity protection. I'm sure you'll discover a whole new world with this. Too long for a comment. But of course, the organization reserves the right to remove inappropriate content/blogs.
Check out harvard law and dartmouth university's blogs for students. Something like that.
Well this is what I call a
Well this is what I call a entrepreneurial thinking, implementing Weblogs into business is quite a good step if we are aware of our business external climate. We can search for successful stories but there are also failures. I hope I am not mistaking but WalMart is one example for that. As long as we get "assisted" in our decisions, why not?
Gordman,
Incorporate Online