I know what you’re thinking – Don’t most companies have a blog by now? Well, yours doesn’t or you wouldn’t be reading this. In fact, as of Feb. 11, 2009, only 12 percent of Fortune 500 companies had external blogs. Given this, it’s a sure bet that even fewer small to mid-sized companies like yours have blogs.
The ideal corporate blog evolves in an atmosphere of trust where posters don’t feel intimidated or stifled. But encouraging openness while discouraging damaging remarks is a very difficult tightrope to walk. Many large companies have discontinued blogs because the atmosphere of candor invites legal problems.
The number one reason that businesses of every size don’t have a blog is mega fear. Some of that fear is legitimate and some is not – that’s what this article will explore with unbiased information and very little advice.
There are two kinds of company blogs – internal and external. There is far less legal risk with an internal blog, mainly because employees don’t post negative remarks for fear of recrimination.
Internal Blogs
Internal blogs, usually accessed via the company’s Intranet, are blogs that any employee and only employees can view. Since employees use them as meeting sites and forums for e-mail discussions, they allow a diverse range of participants at multiple physical locations to contribute their expertise.
Uses for internal blogs include:
· Project collaboration and brainstorming
· Company announcements
· Reinforcing policy
· Sharing information and best practices
· Identifying and clearing up misconceptions
· Catching employee grievances early
External Blogs
The publicly available external blog allows employees and spokespeople to get information quickly, share their opinions, and ask questions. Some external blogs also allow the public to comment. With a little luck, people who love what the company offers will comment regularly.
Because blogs are informal and up-to-the-minute, they will increase transparency – allowing interaction with customers and prospects on a level that encourages closer relationships.
External company blogs are now one of the media’s top tools for finding news and feature ideas. And this is exactly what makes most small business administrators cringe. Other uses for external blogs include:
· Boosting search engine rank
· Soliciting feedback from customers and prospects
· Developing new products and services
· Demonstrating thought leadership
If you’re thinking about an external blog, you need to ask yourself who will participate in the blog. Do your customers/prospects generally read blogs? If not, then don’t create an external blog. There’s no point.
Benefits
The benefits of internal and external blogs are different – but they have some things in common: both increase openness, allow direct and timely communication, and are a relatively inexpensive way to gather credible information.
Benefits of internal blogs include:
· Knowledge Sharing: Blogs are a way to share expertise on specific topics and are especially useful to employees involved in technical areas requiring cutting-edge information.
· Project Management: While there are certainly more comprehensive ways to manage projects – few are as simple to use as blogs, which allow team members to document a project, its progress, its successes and challenges, and lessons learned.
· Broad Communication among Teams and Across Sites: The shared blog space allows users to develop each other’s ideas, answer questions, and solve puzzles.
· Venting: Better out in the open than at the water cooler - maybe.
Benefits of external blogs include:
· Search Engine Optimization: Blogs are tailor-made for search engine algorithms. If your blog is hosted on the same domain as your Web site, then your blog will attract traffic that migrates into the rest of your site – especially if you direct it there.
· Maximum Media and Public Relations Attention: Both online and print media sources troll company blogs to look for news and feature ideas. Your Web site (and blog) will be one of the first places they look for information during a crisis.
· Collaborative Product Development: One of the best sources of product/service development is reading through posts that are critical of your current offerings – especially if other posters concur. Plumb the posts for specifics and ask for clarification early – this will not only give you valuable information, but it will show blog readers that you take complaints seriously.
· Improved Customer Assistance: If you have a complex technical product or service, a blog will be a great way for people who use your offerings to get quick solutions from each other.
· The Ability to Easily Conduct Polls and Receive Feedback: This is assuming that the demographic you need to poll reads your blog. · Improved Customer and Prospect Relations: Although research shows that very few customers and prospects participate in blogs – building customer relationships is still a legitimate benefit.
Risks
Before you get too excited about benefits, here’s the ugly truth about risk.
We’ve all heard the same blog horror stories – trade secrets revealed, employees fired, nasty personal remarks, profanity, competitors using pseudonyms to post damaging content, etc. Are you afraid to create a blog? You should be.
Risks You Can Control
The art and science of blogging has evolved on the backs of other companies’ mistakes. You can avoid many of them if you do the following:
1. Establish an ironclad blogging policy
2. Educate ALL employees
3. Enforce the policy
4. Closely monitor the blog
5. Respond quickly to negative comments
There’s nothing iffy about the above five items. You either have an ironclad blogging policy or you don’t – you either have a schedule for monitoring the blog or you don’t. It’s all about attention to detail.
Risks You Can’t Always Control
You can control many – but definitely not all risks. Most of the uncontrollables involve legal risks that can never be eliminated. Only you can decide whether the benefit to your company of having a blog outweighs the exposure it creates. Risks include:
1. Litigation Risks: Invasion or privacy, defamation, sexual harassment, creating a hostile work environment, copyright infringement, trade libel, federal securities fraud, etc.
2. Security Violations: Transferring intellectual property, and revealing confidential (financial) information and trade secrets.
3. E-Discovery Violations: Creating exposure to judicial sanctions by failing to retain records of all blog content
4. Reputation Assaults: You can prescreen content manually or automatically with content management and aggregation tools, but much of what may cause you problems later will slip through.
5. Regulatory Violations: The type of violation depends on your industry.
You’ve probably avoided creating a blog because of most, if not all, of the above issues. If you have no tolerance for loss of control – do not create a blog.
Other Issues to Consider
Blog Posts are Permanent
Inaccurate, incomplete, deliberately defamatory content, confidential information – once posted - lives forever on the Internet.
Blogs Take Time
It doesn’t cost much to initiate a blog, but it takes time to create posts and monitor content. In addition, internal blogs can waste employees’ valuable time.
Blogs Can Send Visitors Away from Your Site
In order to be friendly to search engines and the blogging community in general, blogs need to include links to other sites. If your blog is part of your company’s Web site, do you really want to send visitors away?
Many companies rush to incorporate new technology because it’s – new - not because it makes sense for them.
If you create a blog, you will increase your SEO rank, you will attract media attention, and you will increase your leadership profile – especially if you’re among the first in your industry to have a blog. Beyond this, there are no guarantees of any benefits.
The risks, on the other hand, are all guaranteed.
Look for other marketing tools that will provide the same benefits without the risks. For example, if you’re interested in informing clients and prospects, consider a periodic e-mail campaign instead.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in brainstorming with customers in order to develop new products and services, there really is no substitute for a blog.
If you decide to go ahead, design security into the blog. At the very least, require full identifying information, a password, and include a legal disclaimer at the end of every page. Have your Web designer create the page, and then run it past your legal advisor before you publish anything.
Since you’ve judiciously waited this long to start a blog, here’s my one piece of advice – now that you know the benefits and risks, don’t create a blog unless:
1. Your target demographic blogs regularly
2. You see one or more clear benefits
3. You are willing to set and reinforce policy, educate employees, and diligently monitor content
The bottom line? Blogs are great tools for a minority of businesses – yours may be one of them.
If not…DON’T CREATE A BLOG.
Reprinted with permission. Jean Van Rensselar is the owner of Chicago-based Smart PR Communications, which specializes in public relations and communications strategy, creation, and implementation for small and mid-sized technical-oriented companies. Jean@SmartPRCommunications.com