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!
Yes, you are on track here and have touch on both clearly, but don’t forget a Corporate Social Media Policy should be developed to address some of the potential issues you have mentioned.