Corporate Blogging

Dilbert has a comment to make about corporate blogging.

There are a lot of companies out there trying to figure out how to make money from the blogging concept, or social media, or "Web 2.0" for managers who've picked up the jargon. Few are doing it successfully, and the fatal flaw is often the choice of writer. Either the writer doesn't have anything to say, or the blog is written by a team posing as the company executive. The reader picks up on the corporate tone, and it's no longer a blog, it's a column.

It comes down to "don't fake it". Or in corporate speak "use an authentic voice"

Open and Transparent, yeah right.

Not really about Amsterdam this time....

An article in the International Herald Tribune caught my eye last week. Jason Goldberg, of Jobster fame, has been blogging.

Executive blogs are tricky, for three reasons;
- any statement, any expression of doubt, can be picked up by the media where it's chewed over, sucked dry and spat out. And somewhere in that process it can affect the company's shareprice or relationship with stakeholders.
- blogs should be about stuff that's interesting, meetings are even less thrilling to read about than to attend.
- the characteristics that make a great CEO don't necessarily make a great writers

Despite that, there are successful and interesting executive blogs, and Jason Golberg's is probably up there in terms of interesting content. However late last year he used his blog to deny any potential redundancies at Jobster promising that there would be no news until the new year.

66 people, 40% of the company, were made redundant on 3 January. Which is technically after the new year. Unless there was some shocking new information recieved on 2 January then Mr Goldberg was less than open about the company's difficulties in 2006.

Mr. Goldberg embraces blogging as a way to demonstrate openness saying "It's the nature of Web 2.0 and new media that if you don't embrace openness, it will come back and bite you." Indeed.