Making your first corporate blog experience a little less scary: Guest Blogger - Hilary Weber, Kaiser Permanente

Posted by Hilary Weber on September 4, 2008

(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.)

Let’s say you and your team have thought it over, considered all the relevant issues and the decision has been made – “we’re going to start a blog.”  But let’s say you also happen to be in a regulated industry, perhaps even in a traditional organization that has been around for several decades…the thought of taking the first step is, well, terrifying.

As scary as it may seem, there are some things you can do to help you get over your fears and jump in.  Here are some steps I recommend taking to help “bullet-proof” your first corporate blogging experience:

Ask for help

Firstly, pick the brains of industry colleagues who are already blogging.  Of course reading up on blogging and attending Web 2.0 conferences can help, but to me there is no substitute for having an actual sit-down conversation with an experienced peer in the same or similar industry who is already blogging successfully.  Make a list of the biggest questions on your mind and get your colleague to show you how they worked through the issues.  You’ll be surprised how willing people are to help each other in situations like this – I know of numerous examples of busy professionals who have shown amazing generosity with their time and experience with their colleagues.

Start with a safe niche topic, but…

Next, choose a first blog topic that is not core to your business. I know this might sound counter-intuitive at first, but it can be too risky for conservative organizations to start out blogging about core business topics – especially if there are people already posting negative content in the blogosphere about your organization.  Choosing a niche topic that is somewhat “off to the side” allows your company to ease into blogging without feeling so exposed.

But – make sure the topic you choose has “legs.”  A topic that is “off to the side” may not be core to the business, but it does need to be interesting and robust enough to stand on its own and be grown and nurtured over time. It also needs to have relevance to your business or brand.  An example would be the blog started by Stonyfield Farm Yogurt called “Baby Babble,” which is about parenting tips, not dairy products, but it ties nicely to the target audience for their Yobaby line of products. The need for the topic to have legs is tied very closely to my next point, which is – make sure the topic has a passionate, blog-ready person behind it.

Picking your blogger

Actually, the choice of the topic and the blogger candidate should ideally be made in tandem.  If you’re really lucky, you may already have one or more “rock stars” on staff who are strong, eloquent advocates for their pet topics and are “ripe for the picking”.  It will do you no good to pick a particular blog topic if you have no one with a real passion for it to keep the blog alive and vibrant day in and day out.  And some passionate people are not great communicators, so get some writing samples from them and make your choice carefully.  Coaching first-time bloggers on the ins and outs of blogging is highly recommended.

One thing that can prevent problems down the road is to have a back-up plan in case the blogger is out or leaves.  It’s best to at least have some plan for “time off back-up” for the blogger – even the best of us do go on vacation (sometimes to remote places with no connectivity) or go on medical leave.  And employees leave companies altogether as well – sometimes not on the best of terms.  A conservative approach is to have a team of bloggers share the blogging responsibilities, so if one person is out or leaves, the blow is not felt as strongly.  If there is a single blogger and (heaven forbid) she leaves on bad terms, you must consider the possibility that she will attempt some sort of sabotage to the blog. Make sure your back-end systems are set up to recover content if needed.

Building your policies

Next, consider developing a corporate blogging policy.  One thing that is likely to happen when your company starts to blog is that it will generate a lot of internal interest.  Blogger wannabes will likely emerge, and you will learn (if you don’t already know) that a large percentage of your workforce is already involved in blogging as a personal pastime.  Coming up with a corporate policy on blogging about company issues can help conservative organizations set expectations and hopefully pre-empt undesired actions on the parts of their employees.

A critical step is to devise a moderation strategy for the blog that balances openness and risk.  Well before the first post goes live, decide if and how the blog will be moderated – most traditional, conservative or regulated organizations will probably be more comfortable being able to screen comments before they are up for all the world to see.  Remember that it’s perfectly legitimate to set ground rules such as “comments that do not pertain to the topic of the blog will not be posted” – this can help to prevent the “gotcha” situations that conjured up all the fear in the first place.  But this must be in place from the beginning – you can’t go out with an “anything goes” approach and then change the rules when you start getting the type of posts that you wanted to avoid.  (Public backlash to companies that have done this has certainly caused many of them to fervently wish they’d never started a blog at all).  And of course be prepared to post both positive and negative comments – it’s the only way to taken seriously and avoid the risk of being labeled as a “flog” (fake blog).

Take the step, and think positive!

Remember to think positive – companies often get a lot of good will just for taking the big step.  The odds are with you that a large portion of your online target audience will appreciate you taking the step to open up a two-way conversation.  Most of the stories I’ve heard from colleagues have resulted in the negative comments being strongly outweighed by the positive ones.  And in a best case scenario, positive commenters may even come to your company’s defense when negative posts come up.

So there you have it – my list of tips is far from comprehensive, but if you follow my recommendations, hopefully taking the first step can be a bit less frightening than before.  I wish you the best of luck with your first corporate blog.

Hilary Weber is …

• Employment: Director of Internet Marketing Services, Kaiser Permanente
• Corporate Blog: kp.org/farmersmarketrecipes