The Big List Blog
Thinking Strategically about Corporate Blogging: Guest Blogger – Michael Brito, Intel
(Members of the Blog Council lead corporate blogging and social media at large corporations. We are delighted to share their thoughts on blogging from the corporate perspective. This post is the guest author’s personal opinion.)
So your boss walks into your office one morning and says, “Our competitors have blogs and now we need one too! Please get one started ASAP and let me know when it’s launched.” And then you’re left scratching your head not knowing where to start. This is a common theme in corporate America.
There are several issues that you need to think about before you “dive in” head first into corporate blogging; and this by no means is a comprehensive list:
- Who is your target audience and do they even participate in social media?
Forrester has published a Social Technographics Ladder of Participation that categorizes social behaviors into six key usage models – Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives. At Intel, we hired Forrester to perform a study that maps our target segments to each of the Technographics profiles; and use this data to serve as our social media strategy for all planning. I believe that a good strategy evolves from data and research; rather than taking the shotgun approach. - Do you have all the right people involved?
It’s good practice to get buy in across the organization before executing on a corporate blog – legal, product development, customer support. They need to know about it; and may even use it to field customer support questions, product innovation ideas, etc. - Do you have a moderation policy?
Hopefully your blog will be open for comments but how will they be approved and to what extent will you allow for “critical” comments? At Intel, we have applied a “good, bad and ugly” policy; whereby we allow for the good and bad but not the ugly. Ugly comments usually contain obscenities of some sort. - What’s your conversation strategy?
I hate to use the word “editorial calendar” for blogging so I have renamed ours at Intel to “blog idea guide”. In the guide, I have listed out all the upcoming events and product launches coupled with ideas that will help guide the conversation; and this does not include white papers and press releases. It boils down to this. You are not talking to an audience, target market or consumer. You are talking to real people with real personalities, wants, desires and passions; and it’s important that you treat them that way by having real conversations with them. Show them the love and they will love you back; and tell people about it too. - Do you have the right people blogging?
In my humble opinion, people relate to other people more then they can relate to corporations. It’s important that your bloggers are aware of this and understand the importance of relationships; so full disclosure and transparency from your bloggers is imperative. It’s also good practice to find those “key” individuals in your organization that are passionate about your products and services, and are enthusiastic to engage in dialogue with others. - Are you going to implement a community evangelist program?
I know, it sounds pretty cool – community evangelist program – and maybe it’s not a program per se but it’s a really simple concept. Are you equipping and training your bloggers to participate in the conversations that are happening off domain. Are they on Twitter, Friendfeed, MyBlogLog, and Facebook? And, are these tools talking to each other and pulling in feeds? - How will you measure your blogging efforts?
I wrote about this over a year and half ago – Measuring Social Media – but it’s still relevant today; and even though the post is about social media, many of the same metrics can be used just for blogging (i.e. comments, views, rss subscriptions, posts emailed to others, posts bookmarked, etc.) I read a report (I can’t remember the source, sorry) that said that a 1:1 ratio of posts to comments is a good benchmark for corporate blogs. While this may seem a bit low, it may be a good start.
Don’t get me wrong. Blogging is our friend. It is an effective communication channel and if it is done properly, it can produce great results for your company. But before you jump right in, hire an agency and launch it, you should consider many of the points mentioned above.
Michael Brito is …
- Employment: Social Media Strategist at Intel Corporation
- Blogs: Britopian and Conversations Matter
- Twitter: Britopian
Michael,
Love the post! You do a good job of breaking down a corporate blog strategy into answerable questions which translate into actionable steps. And I love your focus on how people want to have relationships with people rather than companies. If corporations can let more of the personalities of the people who work for them shine through, I think inevitably audiences and customers will engage in deeper relationships with those people–and that translates into good juice for the company & the brand.
Very good, clear steps for moving ahead! It’d be great if you could look at the next steps: So, you launched your company’s blog — what next?
There’s the on-going learning and sharing with other teammates and peers. Toolkits get refined and accounts get aggregated, tuning in to colleagues working on various programs…some with interesting activities. This is where your editorial calendar grows from “assignments” to “opportunities.”
And as more employees move to have one foot at the center and another at the edge, communicating directly with almost anyone interested in your company…continuous education, re-aligning and team understanding needs to happen.
Your point about people wanting to connect with people is at the core, but there’s also the point that people are representing their company and their efforts become permanent, public record. Sometimes with legal ramifications. This is challenging, and this is where a company’s culture and individual’s character rise up and show what they’re made of. These are times of great opportunities, especially as we refine our listening, sharing and relationship skills.
The Blog Council will be a helpful resource on the road ahead. Good work!
Good list! However, I think that from the outset, you are ignoring one of the key start-up questions – what do you want to do with your business blog. While a general marketing or branding perspective may be the generally perceived “norm” for a business blog, perhaps it shouldn’t be.
The use of blogs for customer service applications, product development, technical support, recruitment or market research are all valid uses for blogs. The reason that this initial question is key is that the decision on this point will influence the answers to many other points that you make above, specifically who writes the blog, target audience, ways to measure the blog’s achievements etc.