How much control is right for a B2B blog?

There is no doubt in my mind that all B2B companies need blogs at the core of their E-Rep initiative and marketing strategy.  That said, even I have some concerns about loose cannons and lousy writers.  My current thinking follows.  What do you think?

Loose Cannons:

Some of your employees are going to blog and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.  In this situation, I’d suggest:

• Offering to host their blog on the corporate site
• Giving them total editorial control.  (If you don’t, they’ll set up their own blog elsewhere and bash you for being overbearing and not willing to trust a valuable employee.)
• Pointing out a few things:
  • The free blog sites are amateurish; corporate support instantly elevates the blogger’s credibility
  • The corporate site and the employee’s blog will complement each other for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) making both more visible and findable.
  • To maintain the win/win, the blogger needs to act and write in his/her normal professional manner
• Recognizing that this move sends a clear message to the world that your company is brimming with thought leaders

Lousy Writers:

For the most part, writing skills are abysmal.  This includes people who have truly valuable and important messages and information in their heads.  For example, I know some brilliant engineers whose writing is painfully B-O-R-I-N-G and some amazingly articulate sales reps who become totally unintelligible in writing.  Here’s how I’d handle it:

• Call a spade a spade & as diplomatically as possible tell them they need some editorial help to avoid embarrassing themselves
• Set up an “Our Brilliant Employees Insights” blog (For sure you’ll need a better name for it than that…)
• Assign an editor who can do clean-up work on any messy prose, grammar, punctuation, etc.
• Invite employees to share their valuable insights through this editor
• Make it known that what you’d really like is to have a whole series of employee blogs to showcase the awesome intellectual horsepower in your company

Am I on the right track here?  Comment below to straighten me out!