Corporate blogs. Say what?!

OK, so many dyed in the wool bloggers will say their work can never be corporate - at least not as they understand the term. But organisations are increasingly eager to engage with customers and stakeholders in a more dynamic way.

Caution is ever the watchword in corporate circles and companies are much more conservative about the type of content and comment that is allowed and how their ‘blog’ is administered. Encourage employees to contribute but make the editorial policy clear from the outset. Probably one person corporate communications or marketing or the MD’s PA will have editorial control - so there’s the formal ‘sign-off’ procedure vital to any PR programme.

Do you allow comments direct onto the blog? Most organisations will shy at this but if you are moderating comments, do it regularly and promptly and engage with all submissions. If a person has something bad to say about you there are worse places they could do that than on your company blog. To prove this to myself I’ve just logged onto Dell Hell again. The .net one. Take a look if you haven’t been there.

Oh, and don’t put in any overt sales messages. Ever. It’s called blowing your credibility.