Nine sound thoughts about corporate blogs

All the talk about corporate blogs, including from the self-proclaimed “gurus” (to whom I can be attributed, in principle), is sinned by exactly one thing - the lack of specifics.
Well, that is to the specific question of the customer “why should I blog” all answer something unintelligible that everything depends on the situation, on the business and finally. Clearly, everyone tries to seem smart and knowledgeable, while not seeking to answer for their words. Consulting, what is already there!
Actually, the discussion in which I participated in the conference on competition and reputation suffered the same. Already tired, in fact. So let's try to reduce the main points of this discussion, as well as my other thoughts on corporate blogging, to the most specific list of theses.

So, nine sensible and, to the extent possible, specific considerations about corporate blogs:

1. A blog is always a living person . In addition to generating intelligent thoughts, he still eats, walks, is ill and even horror! - pees and poops. And of course, he never speaks with emasculated phrases from press releases. Write in your corporate blog humanly.
2. A blog is always an opinion. Subjectivism is our everything, but the most important thing is the presence of a position . Further, the blogger is also required to be able to communicate this position in an intelligible way, so he should be able to write. But in itself the ability to write again is without an opinion, without ideas, without knowledge, it does not cost anything. Therefore, you cannot hire a copywriter blogger. It is necessary to entrust this matter to a functional specialist.
3. The logical continuation is that the specialist should be charged in a fairly specific and narrow topic . It can be technology at the core of your business, your product, your market. But it can not be your company. Nobody is interested in the thoughts of a specialist in your company (read - pi * arshchik). Moreover, nobody is interested in your company as such. Her mission, values, brand - it's all bullshit that nobody cares about at all. Write about the case. Good examples are the grocery blog of the Optimus keyboard project , the expert blog of the office of Misha Yelashkina .
4. When assigning to write to a line specialist, please note that most likely he will not be very interested in working for the expert image of the company. He is much more interested in trading his own face. Therefore, either he quietly sabotages this business, or confines himself to a purely formal approach. And he himself at this time will maintain his own blog in parallel. And the one and the other is absolutely not necessary for the company. Consequence - either give the specialist the opportunity in the corporate blog to work on his image too, or entrust the blogging to a top manager or owner . They are much more interested in working for the image of the company, which is directly related to their own publicity. By the way, the most interesting personal business blogs belong to either entrepreneurs or top managers.
5. Returning to the subject of blogs. Russian companies often do not need the very informational openness declared by apologists of corporate blogging. Too much confidential. Changing the situation is a noble task, but not relevant. Therefore, do not write about the internal life of the company - all the same it will be reduced to the description of corporate drinking parties and other cult events . If you are not yet in the know, they are only of interest to the direct participants, no one else. Therefore, write better about what your business and your employees have competence.
6. Blogging is not just another broadcast channel, but also a good tool for getting feedback. Create a thematic community in LiveJournal, as Beeline did and gather the audience you need there . First, you will receive first-hand information. Secondly, you will seriously increase the loyalty of this audience. Of course, not out of the blue, of course, you will have to work a lot: write, enter into discussions. So be prepared to pay with your time or with the salaries of specialist moderators.
7. Reasonable continuation of the idea of ​​the community - gather users around interesting content and bright personalities . Make them your fans, support group. Their loyalty will come in handy if your competitors decide to use blogs to throw in negatives about you. A well-coordinated fan group with whooping and hooting will trample all the negative - examples in the Russian-language lj do not count. At the conference, a good case was voiced about deputy Lebedev and his hitting about a supposedly existing crack in the foundation of the Federation Tower. Can you imagine how it would be possible to arrange jazz ?
8. Harness the potential of your community to its fullest. Encourage the formation of local authorities - these will be your volunteer evangelical helpers. Allow users to generate their content , express themselves, and satisfy themselves. They will respond to you with gratitude and gratuitous promotion wherever possible. In the end, look at the Apple computer community - millions of evangelists around the world. This is the ideal for which it makes sense to strive.
9. Do not forbid your employees to blog . Do not write bad "corporate policies", they are not needed. God forbid you force employees to make a “weekly blog post plan.” In short, no need to formalize the process. Adequate people and so everything will understand. And inadequate you do not need, right? General words about “employees should be loyal to employers and colleagues in blogs” - they really do not change anything. In the end, if someone wants to put a pig in your company and merge something, he will do it anyway. But you can easily demotivate the rest by driving them into the framework of these instructions and policies. The same effect will have an attempt to chart the "approval" of texts in the blog. Go back to the first and second points: a blog is a specific person with his own opinion, and not a consolidated position of the pi * ar-department, endorsed by the general director.

Well, the last tip - just write. At least sometimes. Somehow. The main thing - write.