Is business blogging for everyone? How leaders push...

It has been two years since my first blog writing project. It started with a small IT security company. Initially it was unclear what the management wanted. On their side they did not know what I can do and what a blog can be used for. Blogging applications like Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type are mature in web applications terms, but their use has not been adopted widely. The use of blogging in corporate communication is new and unproven. Even with a few good examples, companies need to figure out what they can do with a blog. Still, I quickly realized that this IT security start-up was not completely ready to define a blog.

I was partially right but not in the way I imagined. Writing a blog on a regular basis is a new routine. Most people write or read all day long, few write articles for publication and even fewer do it on a regular basis. Even fewer are good at it and attract loyal readers. Most technical and business people have been writing e-Mail messages and sometime write articles but they do not have a routine. But more than that, they do not have a vision and a mission. A blog does not need a mission as a company needs one. It does not have to change the world. Informing and maybe influencing customers would suffice.

As corporate communicators and executives grasp the capability we need to all figure out how to make a business out of blogging. In my case the client's real issue is what to do with a blog. The CEO wanted to drill deep into the message of good security habits. That meant not only tools and processes but policy adopted by management for the general corporate population. He wanted to cover all the issues a corporation faces in security and comment on it. This is not an easy task. The CEO or the senior staff did not realize how much effort it would take just to keep up with all the issues the company wanted to address. The marketing and sales organization did not want to change the overall basic message which they were presenting in front of customers on daily basis. They were uncertain of how this will play with customers that needed a real technical information to solve issues in their every day work. This they believed will help sell and support real business.

Innovation Diffusion model, now we see it in Web2.0 and corporate blogging

After writing a few articles we all realized that what was missing was a strategy. I hate to use the word strategy because they tell me it is overused. There is so much strategy in IT that it somehow lost it's meaning. But in practical terms a strategy is a plan of action based on a mission. It needs to be based on reality, what can the blog owner define, what can be written, edited and promoted to the audience. Than the connection to the company's strategy, not just writing and editing, the top level message and how to sustain the idea over a long period of time. Plan (strategy) will detail also research, promotion and all available resources (marketing, technical, management time and resources). Some CEOS and marketing VPS understand this effort clearly. They struggle with a decision whether to start a blog which demands extra work form their managers (ruffles a few feathers) or wait until the organization can create a blog organically, by itself.

I think that once you come to this fork in the road you are in good shape. At least the upper management realizes the choice to be made. The next step is to assess if management it going to make a decision based on "managerial motives" or not (strategic or tactical). If a CEO realized the value of a blog for the company he will start thinking about strategy (message, positioning, markets, competition). Eventually he will realize how indirectly a blog will reflect on his ability to lead the company into this new era of Web2.0. This sounds simple enough here, but it is not in real life. I think that blogging is really a great example of Web2.0. I am also realizing how difficult the switch from the traditional communication model with static web sites to dynamic flow of articles is going to be. Some will not make the switch.

To some Web2.0 is just a new buzz word. To some it is just a few new applications, they still run "in the browser". The leap from sites which provide information, the equivalency of a printed brochure and white papers to a real community is huge. The leap in terms of intimacy, one-to-one connection, specific issue discussion, detail information ... all that "STUFF that Web2.0 does" - is huge.

So what do we tell the ones who "don't get it?" (or simply don't want it?). I don't think we can tell them much. One of the best way to learn is by doing. But writing and managing a blog is hard and takes a great deal of commitment. Even a personal blog is hard to keep up if you don't have your own mission (opinion). As Yogi Berra use to say:

"If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them."