Thinking about Blogs
27th February 2006 by Natasha Nicholson
At every Leadership Institute, usually in February, the IABC Research Foundation’s Think Tank convenes to discuss issues. I’ve been attending these Think Tanks for many years now and always find them to be very interesting.
One of the interesting things about them is that how, despite different participants and different approaches, so many of the issues stay the same. The one thing that does seem to change dramatically is anything having to do with technology. At last year’s Think Tank in Seattle I don’t recall a word said about blogs. At this years meeting in Charlotte, N.C. it came up as a serious item for discussion.
Questions were raised about whether and to what extent should a company support a blog? How do blogs fit into the new communication mix? With this conversation as with so many, I sensed some confusion about the role that blogs play in this world of new media.
I felt a bit clearer about blogs because long time IABCer, Bill Briggs and I had just conducted and interview with the famous MicroSoft blogger (well, at least famous to other bloggers). I talked about how companies felt that a certain sense of control had been taken away with the introduction of blogs to which he responded that they never really had control to begin with, they just have less.
Scoble confessed to spending about 18 hours a day doing something related to the blog. And I believe it. During our lunch/interview, his phone (his key blogging vehicle) was receiving so much of his attention that it almost seemed as though it should have had its own place setting. When I asked Scoble how often he gets in trouble for going too far, he said “Weekly.” Still there he is, an employee blogging away about MicroSoft business with, as it appears, the support of the company.
If all it takes is for one blogger to capture the attention of others, including the media, it seems the difference now is that the customer is in direct control — and the communication line from customer to employee is more direct and unfiltered. There is less time — no time really — for positioning an issue for key stakeholder like employees and customers.
The rules are changing and it seems that the communication message is now in the hands of the people who are directly creating or experiencing the product or service. Employees can voice their opinions and the customer is listening. There’s an inherent transparency emerging and there’s no stopping it. Is that statement going too far? Or is this just a novelty that is just another part of the new mix of technology coming our way? What do you think?
February 27th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for the post Natasha.
The more I look at the ideal world of corporate blogging, and the “real” world of organizational communication, I see a fundamental disconnect. The issue is that although technology is in place for employees to have a dialog with customers, they are still representing the business and there should be some form of consistency and coherence to the communication.
In other words, organizations are collections of people who make workgroups. Those groups make business units and (if your lucky) those business units make a cohesive-functioning organization. It’s like a body of people making a whole. Let me play devils advocate. I need an Accounts Payable (AP) department to ensure bills are payed the same way my body needs a liver. They serve very important functions. However, I don’t expect that my liver will have a conversation with my wife tomorrow morning (and I preferred if it didn’t!) Just as I would prefer if Chuck in AP didn’t have a running dialogue about our upcoming product release with customers, the press, investors etc. make sense?
Please punch holes in my analogy. I am not against blogs per se. I see a use for them as informal knowledge sharing tools inside organizations. I am just struggling with the concept of open communication with all from all. Thoughts?
February 27th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Response to the IABC Blog on Corporate Blogging
The following post is a reply to a post that appeared on the IABC Employee Communication Commons Blog. The title of the post is: Thinking about Blogs.Thanks for the post Natasha. The more I look at the ideal world of
February 27th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Brad,
I love the liver analogy! And it makes perfect sense to me that Chuck should sit quietly doing his paperwork in the accounting department rather than spilling the beans to the press about all the numbers in front of him. It does make one wonder.
The one thing that does seem to be emerging is a self-policing of sorts. If an employee, or customer spouts off about something that is false or premature, they are called on it, viciously sometimes. The rules of conduct are different, but they do exist. There’s some comfort in that. It’s fascinating to see it all unfold.
February 27th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
[...] IABC Employee Communication Commons: Thinking about Blogs While IABC’er Natasha Spring feels the love from Robert Scoble (he’s good at that), and believes that communications is going to change where everyone blogs, “The Memo” thinks it does not make sense to have everyone in a corporation blogging, nor do you want your different divisions talking to your customers (partially because they might not know what they are saying). A nice point and counterpoint that cover both sides. [...]
February 28th, 2006 at 6:54 am
Brad - would you be opposed to Chuck blogging about accounting practices with like-minded people who sit quietly in their offices doing accounting paperwork? That’s where I beleive blogging comes in handy and provides an added-value.
February 28th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Brad, the problem with your analogy is that, under most companies’ vision for employee blogging, the liver would only blog about liver-related issues. Consider Microsoft, where Heather Hamilton — a recruiter — blogs about recruiting-related matters. Don’t be lulled into thinking that employee bloggers are limited to high-tech companies. Thomas Nelson Publishers, the 11th largest publisher in the world, has encouraged its employees to blog. CEO Michael Hyatt’s rationale: to raise the visibility of the company and its products;to make a contribution to the publishing community; and to give people a look at what goes on inside a real publishing company.
The two requirements for employee blogging (as articulated by Scoble and his co-author, Shel Israel, in their book, “Naked Conversations”) are passion and authority. Chuck in AP has no authority about product, so he wouldn’t blog about it (other than expressing pride, perhaps, in a new product launch or some other achievement), but he WOULD blog about getting bills paid on time.
Finally, as Mike Manuel pointed out in a post to his blog (”Media Guerrilla”), the company would want to make sure all employees had accurate information so they would deliver a consistent message through their various blogs.
Ultimately, though, leaders routinely ask their employees to evangelize the company and its products to friends, neighbors, and relatives. (Consider GlaxoSmithKline’s initiative to get 8,000 US salespeople to practice PR in the field!) Expanding that audience through a blog is just that — expanding the audience for messages the company already expects you to deliver on its behalf.
March 1st, 2006 at 6:11 am
Employees have always talked about their employer, and its products or services. At parties. With friends and family. Letters to the editor. With casual acquaintances on the bus ride to work. Blogs are just the newest way for people to voice an opinion.
Blogs and other technologies provide employees with a potentially larger audience. They may or may not understand the responsibility that places on them. A corporate blogging policy should explain that responsibility.
With responsibility comes accountability, either at the corporate level (reprimand, termination, etc.) and the peer level. How popular is the blogger that drives down share price in a company that has a profit sharing plan?
We’ve been here before, with online forums, with Usenet, with e-mail.
Employees will blog about their employer if they are passionate, the issue is whether they are passionately positive or passionately negative. Most often, the corporate culture will determine that.
Like all those personal websites that popped up in the ’90s, bloggers will be perceived to have authority - or at least the inside scoop - whether they do or not. Readers will judge for themselves whether a blog is authoritative, believable and responsible.
Having technology does not guarantee it will be used or used effectively. Is everyone with access to MS Word or WordPerfect a writer? No.
Communicators and their organizations need to understand that it’s up to the organization to instil employees with the passion and authority to speak well of the employer.
March 1st, 2006 at 7:24 am
Kevin nailed the answer. Employees have always and will always talk about their employers. Employee communications pros should be concerned that the bloggers are well-trained in the brand, understand and embrace the brand and are accurately reflecting it in their interactions with every audience, not just customers, rather than be concerned that they’re actually interacting with customers.
If the blogger has a negative point-of-view, it will come out in everything they do, every contact with customers or other audiences. Their blogging just makes it a little more evident, a little more quickly.
Which points to another tool in the communicator’s quiver: blog searches. Communicators that want to be seen as strategic and vital to supporting their organization’s brands should monitor the blogosphere and the Internet regularly to identify emerging conversations that may effect their brands. The folks at Kryptonite, for example, didn’t see it coming when people started complaining about their locks being opened with a Bic pen a few years ago…and when they did figure it out, they didn’t come straight with consumers.
March 5th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I have two blogs, one showcasing my writing samples and the other my personal passion of photography. At present I do not blog for my job. I do think going forward if employees are communicating directly with the public via blogs, there should be during new employee orientation strict guidlines via the corporate and operateing group message. This could both be communicators dream and nightmare rolled into one. My fear is the message will be inconsistant.
Bill