Nice cartoon, isn’t it? I loved it when I saw it: comical, satirical but quite black humored too. I assume Rick can be any of the employees sincerely blogging about his company. It’s funny, but the reality is too familiar to ignore. If you represent a corporation who decided to blog, you have quite a huge responsibility there. Figure out this situation. You have already reached a considerable number of readers. If somebody, either employee or from the outside, posts wrong information or makes an unfavorable impression, you can’t just shut down the blog. Some experienced PR advice is needed to get out from the crisis.
„It’s scary,” says Technorati founder and CEO David Sifry. „The lesson everyone learns in Marketing 101 is, ‘Control the message.’ Blogging puts that on its head, and that’s very frightening.”
But, let’s summarize a few of the challenges for having a corporate blog:
- unexpected comments that over criticize the company or its product/services
- employees who bad mouth the company
- irregular update
- too stiff and press release – like style
- late response to comments
I see these issues as having some possible solutions:
1. First, select a few key editors from the senior employees to post on the blog. They should be perceived as experts in the industry. Engage these pioneers in a conversation about what your corporate blogs hope to accomplish, and why.
2. A set of rules/guidelines for the company bloggers would be advisable. It’s important to know what’s allowed and what is not. More than that, let the company bloggers suggest the rules. Actually, I am thinking why not set a double blog policy: one that should be for internal use and one that should be made public. If these policies can be the same, it would be great.
3. A chief editor should supervise the entire blog activity, both articles and comments.
4. Pictures, videos should be posted for making it more blog friendly and informal.
5. Know your audience. The readers who post over criticism comments would be advised to post it on their blog and establish a link exchange. (I don’t know how much this will work ?!).
6. Update the blog on a regular basis.
Last but not least, the cartoon above is taken from http://blaugh.com – the (un)Official comic of the blogosphere. Brad Fitzpatrick is bLaugh’s artist, and Chris Pirillo is its creative writer. Congrats guys! You’re making the blogosphere a much funnier place.
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?