Challenges To Blogging For Business

When I got my new job in October 2004 one of the main reasons my new employer seemed attracted to me was because of my blog(s). My employer was interested in me was because they wanted to take advantage of my blogging skills and use it for their benefit.

This didn’t seem to be a problem. I was prepared to help a company create a corporate blog and we had even written several posts about corporate blogging on PSFK.

Now working for that new employer (a brand development consultancy) I have realised that it’s not so simple to create a corporate blog versus your own. Here are some reasons:

* Who writes. Yeah, I am a supporter of the ‘let your employees blog’ movement – but the % of employees willing to blog is actually quite small and normally web-centric folk. Will these give a fair representation of your firm’s POV?

* Time. You work for a small firm and you’re busy supplying the clients’ needs – it’s difficult to divert resources.

* Reward. The ROI isn’t exactly tangible, especially short term. How do you convince your boss to give you 20% of your time for blogging?

* POV 1. How and what I write on PSFK may not be totally appropriate for a professional services firm. I am rash, emotional. I read something and I react with a post. Occasionally someone else reacts with an email demanding that I take the post down or fear death. Or something close.

* POV 2. There are so many blogs out there with POV on the marketing sector(s) – what’s going to make your company’s distinctly different? And how are you going to keep it different? This is a creative and resource challenge.

* Blogging is not only about blogging. It’s about community, it’s about sharing, it’s about commenting, linking and all those other things we do to keep it rumbling on.

* Copyright. Many companies’ lawyers may not be too comfortable with the regular bloggers approach to copyright. Especially when it comes to imagery.

* Up to the minute. There is a correlation re. the popularity of a blog and the frequency of posts. Can your firm support this? Do they have the time, the ideas, the creative resource, the research needed.

Anyway – a few thoughts. I have a long list of marketing blogs I reviewed here if it helps anyone: http://www.psfk.com/2004/10/adragsadblogsar.html

Link Update 02/05: Issues Facing Corportae Blogs by Diva Marketing