From a quality control standpoint, I can understand why companies would be reticent to embrace blogs. One disgruntled or indiscreet employee can do a lot of damage.

However, companies that fail to adapt to the new climate will find themselves falling behind the marketplace, having no efficient mechanism to solicit and make use of consumer feedback.

This also raises the issue of fair compensation. Do blogs bring value to the company?

The answer is and will always be, "Some do and some don't." If that's the case, how do companies reward (and therefore encourage) the contribution of those that do while not denigrating and discouraging the effort of those that don't?

The issue of compensation is an interesting one. I also wonder if more companies are going to "hire" superstar bloggers... after scoble left microsoft they have hired Hugh from Gapingvoid: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003857.html

It was a little more organic than just microsoft recruiting but its an interesting case

Hi Karl,

Good post. I read the McKinsey report also, and had the same thought you cited here: "One of the problems is that the people who are blogging are not necessarily the communication professionals -- those the companies would like to be blogging."

Don't you think that goes back to the marcom people worrying about whether or not employees at every level can or will faithfully represent the company brand to the consumer? I really think that's the issue in a nutshell. What's your take on this?

I have to wonder if it wouldn't make sense for companies to create a 'blogger' slot at every level of the business and reward employees who have the expertise and show promise in the area of blogging/communication by allocating them time to blog as part of their task.

By having the company communicating at every level, and by having handlers for bloggers, the company could ensure that these people spoke in a voice that was brand effective and could create an approval processes that ensured that no trade secrets were leaked.

If done correctly this process would give the employee a lot of freedom with minimal oversight to ensure the needs above were met.

On the other hand, If the handlers were too draconian or pushed marcom fodder to the people to simply restate in their own words, it would soon be transparent to the readers that this was simply polished marketing material with a new name and the 'blogging-employee' slot would become something no employee would want to fill because they wouldn't truly have a voice.

It's a good article the business companies are still uncomfortable talking to their customers directly, actually, uncomfortable allowing "employees" to talk to customers directly. If you are interesting visit the site business strategy

Good ideas Gene, but one thing I will tell you is that any level of approval process will risk killing the spontaneity and voice of the blog. It seems to me that as soon as PR and Marcom get involved everything becomes sanitized and the blog ends up sounding like another mouthpiece of the company. I do think that simple guidelines should be put in place around basic netiquette, security etc. but approvals will be challenging. In the end the biggest block to bloggers will be culture, many people may outwardly support blogging but culture can kill it.

"Good ideas Gene, but one thing I will tell you is that any level of approval process will risk killing the spontaneity and voice of the blog. It seems to me that as soon as PR and Marcom get involved everything becomes sanitized and the blog ends up sounding like another mouthpiece of the company."

Bingo Karl. It's the difference between giving the customers a voice, and giving them a voice that the company has pre-approved ;)

I wondered aloud when reading this post whether it was truly the company people that are "scared of blogs".

Perhaps it's traditional management consulting companies that are the ones truly "scared of blogs" and they put up barriers to adoption? After all, a return to direct customer dialougue that breeds customer satisfaction and innovation in ways Peter Drucker would be proud would lessen the need for certain consulting services it would seem.

The fear of employees not really feeling or representing the brand well with their own, non-company-sanitized blogs is the best arguement I've heard for remembering that marketing starts interntally... your employees should be your best brand ambassadors. If a company has really done a good job with "getting the right people on the bus" to quote author Jim Collins, then the blogs can be authentic and valuable to the company's marketing efforts overall. It's just so much easier to say than to do. :)

Allowing employees to blog "freely" sends out a clear message to the company: even people that deal with nuts and bolts have valuable things to say.

Command & Control techniques don't work well, in the blogosphere, where you can always write under an alias.

The best option is to make bloggin an allowed and even rewarded practice, and promote training to minimize "risk".

People will feel good by the freedom and will thank you the additional training and the associated personal development.

The key is to have employees participate in the creation of a corporate blogging policy. At Sun, IBM and many other companies where employees blog, the policies, which you can read online, basically say not to be a jerk, not to give away intellectual capital, and to use common sense.

Thanks for pointing out Sun's guidelines BL, they are excellent :-) I'm actually working on some blogging policy myself so that will be very useful.