Part of using social media as a business strategy is using SM techniques (e.g. blogging) to reach customers and influence perspectives.
I am a corporate blogger. All false modesty aside, I am considered a very successful and influential corporate blogger in our little corner of the market. If you're interested, see here.
But we're wrestling with some interesting strategic problems as we try to scale corporate blogging, and integrate it better into other things going on.
And, like most things, there are no easy answers.
Corporate Blogging: An Oxymoron?
If you listen to people talk about blogging, it's all about self-expression, being authentic, unscripted, etc. It appeals to the little anarchist inside all of us.
Corporations are about control, consistency and conformity -- generally speaking. And, at some point, these divergent perspectives overlap, and we have the new entity, the "corporate blogger" -- someone who blogs on behalf of the company they work for, but does so in a personal way.
How It Works
When we got started with this back in Sept 2006, I was in a privileged position. I was writing and speaking very effectively about EMC. I spent a lot of time in front of customers, analysts, press, etc. I was a de-facto "voice" for EMC already to a large extent.
As a result, I had the credentials to go out and start blogging under "corporate colors", and people generally trusted me. I avoided review processes, approvals, groupthink, etc. I had a license to go experiment.
The experiment started to work out wonderfully after a few months, and has become one of the great marketing success stories of EMC, and, of course, for me personally.
On a given day, I'll get between 500 and 2000 hits. My material is picked up by dozens of outlets. When I weigh in on something, you can see the visible reaction in the space-time continuum.
EMC employees, customer and partners love it -- it speaks to them and their passion for EMC. It's considered required reading by a surprising number of people. All good.
What Happened
Recently, EMC launched a humoungous upgrade to their web presence, EMC.COM. This was a year-long project involving a team of over 150 people around the world. This was a fundamental re-architecting of how we viewed our web property, re-thought from the ground up.
If you're interested in contemporary thinking for corporate web sites, especially in tech, I'd invite you to take a closer look at www.emc.com. It's probably going to win an award or something.
As part of their rollout, they wanted very much to incorporate corporate bloggers into the property. This took the form of a strong desire to use the same style sheets, layout, etc. for the corporate blogs as the rest of the property.
Originally, I was open to the idea, but as I saw the prototypes, I found myself rebelling -- big time. And, as I thought about it, I realized it wasn't just a situational thing with me. This was a precursor to a much bigger struggle in reconciling conflicting goals.
And, after some thought, I know what we're going to do about it.
The Corporate Blogger Perspective
I take my blogging very seriously. It's a reflection of me, and it's a reflection of the company I work for. If I didn't care so much, it wouldn't be a good blog, would it?
I happened to be checking out my blog one day, and noticed that the entire layout had changed. Sure, I knew that some changes were in the works, but my blog's look and feel was dramatically changed, and I felt that I was being viewed as another data sheet or press release -- bang it into a format, and get it out there.
Worse, there were problems with the style sheets. Line spacing was absent, fonts were small, and the HTML was messing up font sizes so that they appeared to randomly jump up and down in size. It was a formatting mess.
The layout was very busy and very corporate -- it looked like a dashboard, and less like a place to express your thoughts. Even the name of the blog had been changed, from "Chuck's Blog" (very personal and individualized) to "Our People: Chuck's Blog" (I'm just a gear in a very large machine).
I thought to myself "I've been borg-ed" -- a reference to a Star Trek story line you might be familiar with.
I was outraged. I had thoughts of going on strike, and refusing to participate until my demands were met. I went to the adminstrative panel, and switched back to the "old look" until we could get a few things sorted out.
Then I realized there's a middle ground somewhere.
The Balancing Act
There's a fine balancing act between the need for individual expression with corporate blogging, and the need for conformance to branding and visual style. And, I realized, we needed ombudsman.
I, for one, didn't want to get into endless discussions with web design people about what was right and what was wrong. Besides, they're looking out for the integrity of the whole of the EMC.COM site; the presence of a handful of corporate bloggers is just a nit in the big picture.
On the other hand, I realized that, without some accomodations, I would be disincentived from further blogging, and so would other people. Blogs (and blogging) are very different than other forms of content, and that's not always obvious to people. They're conversations.
I found someone in the web group who basically got what I was talking about. This person had already weighed in a bit on the new layout from a bloggers' perspective, and how the uber-style-sheet approach had basically worked against my site being an effective and attractive blog.
I'm recruiting her now to be sort of an ombudsman for corporate bloggers. She understands both perspectives -- mine from a corporate blogger perspective, as well as the concerns of the web development team.
I think that -- over the next few months -- we'll be able to work through some do's and don'ts in supporting individual corporate bloggers, yet still retain the harmonious view of a heavily branded corporate web site.
And, I for one, will be very glad if we can strike this balance.
So, Does This Matter?
Oh yes, IMHO. A roster of effective corporate bloggers is becoming a devestatingly powerful force in marketing these days. It's an essential piece of "social media as a business strategy" discussion.
We're using our behind-the-firewall platform (ONE|EMC) as a safe place to grow new corporate bloggers; give them a chance to get comfortable with the whole thing prior to venturing out in deep water.
If you're setting up to alienate these same people through unduly heavy-handed operational details, they won't want to do it.
And, like with most things to do with social media, people have to want to do stuff.
You can't make them.
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