Alright then.

Yes. Blogging a marketing message does not scale.

I was so focused on the processes, I thought you were suggesting that providing infrastructure was disingenuous, but you are saying that handing out an edict to employees to echo the PR message is disingenuous. (The problem with long posts.)

So, you weren’t saying that trade secrets are disingenuous, but you got me thinking about it.

Bloggers need to consider persona. And maybe teach persona, or talk about persona with corporate types.

You can be open and keep secrets. If someone asks, simply say that it is secret. People have their secrets. There is always something someone is not telling you, and if you must know that that is, you’re the one who’s a little off. Allow an individual to decide what they want to share.

Are you implying I’ve said anything less?

No, not at all! We are all individuals, and blogs accentuate that, as they should. Just like having lunch with someone you’ve only enchanged corporate email with before accentuates their differences from everyone else as you get to know them better.

The thought that bloggers will all reinforce some holy corporate brand is ludicrous. Yes, they *should* like the company they’re blogging for of course, but everyone is different.

We’re certainly in agreement.

“Repeat after me, we are all individuals” is actually an old Steve Martin line. Some advocate (as theMarketingSherpa article seems to) that somehow, effective bloggers can be pumped out, repeating the same corporate message instead of being themselves and hopefully engaging and helping customers.

Thanks. Nice anecdote in the story. No, Bob Lutz knows that when he blogs about GM he puts on his CEO persona, his car guy persona, and talks as individual, but knows better than to divulge corporate secrets. Scoble notes that many people at Microsoft are privy to secrets, and keeping secrets is part of their job.

Note. A lot of people are responding to my post by first asserting that I advocate marketiod corporate bloggers, and then dressing me down.

I’m only trying to draw the attention of these blog from the heart marketing folks to some of the true costs, and issues of blogging. I thought I raised some good questions about boundaries, privacy, and training about the details we take for granted.

Here’s the abstract:

“So many who are watching the corporate blogosphere are afraid of people like Bob Lutz spilling his guts in a moment of impassioned reply to a post in his blog. Think about it. Bob knows what he can and cannot say. He’s not going to have dinner with his neighbor and spill the beans on the latest at the Design Center. He knows better than to say that, either on the blog or off.”

Are you implying I’ve said anything less?

We must tightly restrict conversations between employees and customers and others.

Blogging and conversation policy: company personnel may only read sales and marketing literature to non-empoyees, and may only regurgitate it verbatim on blogs. The only exception is when they have memorized said literature and can speak or blog it verbatim without directly reading it.

Yeah, verily. We the company have spoken. No smoking or chewing bubblegum either - EVER!

Repeat after me, “We Are All Individuals.”

Well, first off. Don’t let the bullet points fool you. I’m a programmer first, windbag second.

As a programmer, I’d like to talk down to earth to Michiganders about blogging. There are considerations in a union state that makes UL listed products, that are not faced in a stock-option fueled startup that makes social bookmarking software.

That’s all. The conversations must be Naked Conversations, honest, open, and engaging. (Thought it was clear I was coming down against the notion that blogging *augments* the corporate message, I’ll retune after some sleep, I guess.)

I want us to get real about how hard it is get a blog going. It is lost on the uninitiated. This is a bit of reality that was driven home hard by my efforts with Think New Orleans.

When you undertake an endeavor as a corporation, there is a lot more liablity, and reponsiblity than if you blog as an individual. I’m trying to get a fix on the true costs, and the necessary infrastructure for corporate blogging. You can’t have each and every employee start from zero, it’s not cost effective.

Yes, you are right, MVPs. Maybe encouraging your resellers to blog, like your dealer network. Maybe just engaging other bloggers in your industry in their arenas, not yours.

I think GM does a good job of getting out into the blogosphere and posting where the coversation’s at. Here’s one I ran across recently, Where’d the GM smallblock blog go?, well, there’s the answer right there in the comments. The Director of New Media, Michael Wiley chimes in.

Yes, there are customers out there. I wasn’t suggesting that the blog be culled of any critcism. I’m only noting that it’s not the same thing as someone calling in to ask about their warranty. Anyone can post, and some folks are going to be trollls. Maybe this part of the training explains the concept of trolls, how not to feed trolls, etc. It’s a little different from fielding a customer inquery, it’s the ability to moderate. Sound better?

If you’re downsizing, or tanking, early press releases are the least of your problems. (There’s an unpleasant question, what becomes of the blog of a terminated employee?)
Check out Scoble’s post on trade secrets. Great points on how employees can share knowledge and keep secrets. It’s their job.

Er, so I disagree with you on the last bit. But otherwise, I agree, and must be off message. Help.

Why limit blogging to employees? Microsoft, for instance, has an MVP program where non-employees are certified and empowered to spread the word about Microsoft products. Why aren’t these people, obviously fans of a company, tapped for both their experience and fervor?

To point 4: It’s well and fine to say that the people who are leaving comments aren’t customers, but it’s not accurate. Some of them are. Policies that deal only with flame-worth comments are policies that will make your blog laughable. Sure, people will complain or use the comments to make a case for their particular plight, but there are also potentially legitimate points made by some of those people. Acknowledging commonly-known issues is just as legitimate as banning a spammer.

To point 5: Please. Do you honestly expect that the person you entrust with the keys to a corporate blog to be the source of a leak? Stamping documents “Confidential” is not going to stop the person sending memos to F**d Company; it’s encouraging it. Corporate bloggers are exactly what they sound like: marketers. Pretending they are anything else by implementing onerous document security based on their existence only increases the likelihood of a leak from elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see more corporate blogging, but setting companies up to be disingenuous is doing them a disservice. Corporate blogs need to be closer to the personal blog world: honest, open, and engaging. Anything else and they will fade into deserved mockery.