Blogging with Smarts and Guts

The ever generous and insightful Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion offers the most down to earth advice for any business about who should be blogging for the company. Steve says, "Blog from the Gut of Your Company, " USA Today has a big story asking why CEOs aren't blogging in droves. I think they are making a bigger deal out of this than is warranted. Often the most interesting corporate blogs are the ones that are written by the rank and file. They come from the passionate "gut" of the company, not necessarily from the top."

Although Steve is referring to an external, public facing blog, his advice is sound for internal blogs as well. The only exception is that we believe that all employees should have a blog (enterprise blogs) for internal communications so that employees can develop and share ideas across the organization. The whole of idea of corporate blogging is still developing. Much of the focus has been on external, PR types of blogs with little being said about internal blogging. Anyway, I found a post by Amy Gahran that goes in-depth on journalism and blogging but a lot of it applies to internal blogging as well.

Amy Gahran from Contentious offers up a four part series on what she leaned from a recent blogging conference. Here is Index to this series:

1. Ethics, blogging, and journalism: The not-so-wild West
2. Are bloggers journalists? Who really cares?
3. Transparency vs. Substantiation: Two Sides of the Credibility Coin
4. What bloggers and journalists can learn from each other

What Bloggers and Journalists Can Learn from Each Other (part 4) "Media is constantly evolving. So is the social and cultural context in which media exists. If journalism is to survive, it must adapt to the changing media landscape. This means much more than reposting print or broadcast stories on the web. It means taking a hard look at how journalism is practiced. It means accepting a new context, and changing how journalism gets done to remain relevant in the current context." 

I am interested in internal blogging for the purpose of collaboration, innovation, and on how ideas are implemented, and I think Amy's ideas have a direct impact on how to organize the process to get ideas across to others.

WHAT BLOGGERS CAN LEARN FROM TRADITIONAL JOURNALISM

Fact-checking enhances credibility.
Conduct interviews.
Identify your sources.
People like to distinguish fact from opinion.
Learn the law.

WHAT JOURNALISTS CAN LEARN FROM BLOGGING

News organizations don’t have sole jurisdiction over defining what’s news.
Give the audience a voice.
People crave meaning and connection, not just facts.
Blogs and feeds can help you cover your beat.
Worry less about scoops and more about uniqueness.
Advocate web-friendly changes.

WORKING TOGETHER

1. Have local meetings.
2. Read each other, and comment on each other.
3. Link to each other. Link love is the currency of the web – even for major news organizations.
4. Be transparent.

These are tips we can all use, for internal or external blogging.  Thanks, Amy for putting this so succinctly.