To blog or not?

Blogging is mainstream now, no longer the domain of the technically elite. For any organisation with a web presence they need to consider if they should be blogging and how they should do it should they decide to go down that path. In this post we share some opinions on blogging and it’s benefits and the risks associated with Blogging. We shall also look at some practical issues and some ideas that as a business you can consider.

What is Blogging?

You probably know this already, but lets cover it again, just to make sure we all have the same starting point. A “Blog” is a type of website where updates are listed chronologically. So a news page is often like a Blog. Blogs come from the term Weblog and are often like an online diary for individuals. They are shared online as web pages and as a RSS feed that can be syndicated.

Blogging is a way of sharing information with clients, customers, suppliers, etc.

Things to think about?

A blog is a public thing, you are sharing information about what you are doing with anyone and everyone. So your clients, your compeditors, etc. As such what ever you share you need to understand can and will be read by people you don’t expect. As such it is important that you have policies in place about what you will blog about and the way in which you and your organisation blog.

A blog allows you to share the inner working of your organisation with the outside world. This can be very powerful and very risky too. If you talk about a terrible day you have a customer might interpret that as you being annoyed with them for example. You may talk about a great meeting with a client, and have a competitor work out who the client is and swoop in and try and steal the business.

Organisation or Individual?

There are two main types of blog out there, the individual sharing and the organisation sharing. This blog, that you are reading now, is a organisational style blog. The work of multiple authors and to be honest with you; we share little about the inner workings of enVirtua via the site. We use it as a way of expressing our ideas and opinions on a range of areas we work in. The staff of enVirtua also write for their individual blogs, but keep work and personal separate.

This is not always the case. Sun for example promote blogging by staff and host a large number of blogs for staff who blog on the Sun domain as individuals.

What this raises is the issue of managing blogging in your organisation. And much of it comes down to the level of transparency you are happy to have with the outside world. It is something different in all organisations and something you need to discuss and decide upon before you start. You probably want to talk with staff about it today, you may find staff running blogs already. Now is the time to discuss how what they blog relates to their position in the organization.

For example, you may decide to setup some corporate blogs and ask all staff to keep work stuff on the corporate site and ask them not to blog about work on their personal blogs. You will have some policies in place about what is and is not acceptable to talk about on the blogs. For example, you will want to make it clear that there are some things they can talk about. Product features, benefits, etc for example. But you will probably say you don’t want people blogging about the company financial status.

You may or may not want people to blog about new products or features? The plus side is that your new features/products will get known earlier and clients might get excited to buy your new product. Alternatively, it may be giving away too many secrets.

How to start Blogging?

Getting started is easy. Depending on the decisions you make, you can install something like WordPress on your website and create accounts for people to use to login and type up entries. Alternatively, you could use some of the free services available such as Blogger.com.

Once you have the technical elements in place, you will want to sit down and plan out what you are going to write about and how often you will write. Once a week is a good target. If you put down on paper in advance what you want to write about that will help you start.

Important first steps are also to read other peoples blogs in your industry. See what they do and follow their lead, write responses to other peoples blogs. If you agree with them, or not, write about it.

Summary

Blogging is a fantastic way of opening up to your clients and partners. You can share and engage with your clients and customers. You need to be careful about how you approach blogging and make sure you have made decisions about what you will and won’t allow to be written about. You will have a plan and you will blog just like any other task in your business… with dedications, consistency and enthusiasm.