Bernaisesource

This is a continuation of an interview with Christopher Barger, who heads up IBM's blogging efforts.  The first part of the interview was posted this past Monday. 

Greenfield:  How would you rate IBM’s blogging efforts?  

Barger:  We've done well, but there is always room for improvement.  The first phase was the grand unveiling -- go forth and blog.  Next step – tie it more closely to business strategy.  For small and medium and businesses, for example, which is a very important part of our strategy – who do we have in SMB who would be an effective blogger? 

It’s important that we keep focused on the audience’s interests, not just our own. Let’s not just discuss new software or new product.  Let’s talk about the issues the audiences are facing and pay attention to what they want to hear.  Stonyfield Farms yogurt has blogs that don’t even mention yogurt.  They provide information that’s relevant and related to their core audience’s interests, and that’s why their blogs are successful.  

Greenfield:  Won’t IBM’s blogging efforts lose their authenticity if it is about strategy?

Barger:  Blogging is both a science and art, and this is the “art” part. The key is finding the right individuals. It’s not about the title of the blogger, it’s about having passion, about being unafraid of feedback and engagement. They need to want to learn from their audiences too, and be there for the dialogue and not just to “message.” And if we have those bloggers, the ones who enjoy the interaction and who “get” the blogosphere instead of just feeling like they need to have a blog because everybody else has one or because they want to raise their own profile, I think we’ll be okay.

Greenfield: What lessons have you learned? 

Barger:  Community policing works. You really can trust most people to be fair-minded and to want to be responsible – both your employees and outside bloggers. For the most part, the fist-shakers get ignored, or corrected by more fair-minded members of the community. 

It is the dynamic of the community that influences the conversation.  Fellow IBMers are watching the blogosphere.  When they see something bad, they bring it to my attention faster than any internal monitoring group.  It is all volunteer.  It is not part of their responsibility to do it.  I am connecting with people at IBM and that would never have happened without blogging.  

Greenfield: What advice would you give your counterparts at other companies?

Barger:  If executives are going to blog, but don’t have time, DON'T use ghost writers. It’s such a personal communication, and no one else can be you.  It’s all about authenticity.   Also, don’t see blogging as just another channel to get your message out. Blogs are about dialogue, about conversation, and about interaction. Look on them as an opportunity to learn from your audiences as well as to influence them.

Greenfield: What’s on the horizon with blogging and social media at IBM?

Barger: We’re going to continue to expand our blogging program – even internally, where we have more than 24,000 registered users of the blog platform, that’s not even 10 percent of our employee population. So we have room to grow. We’ve also embarked on a similar kind of initiative with podcasting and videocasting; we’ve got a tool inside the firewall that allows any IBMer to record, edit and upload their own podcasts internally, and we expect to expand this program to external publishing (IBMers publishing their own podcasts externally) very soon.  And we’ve now started experimenting with video in the same kind of way. 

The bottom line is that it’s becoming so much easier for any employee to produce content – written, audio, or video -- and distribute it; and we want to find the best way to enable that and tap into the collective expertise of our employees while acting in the company’s best interest. It’s really an exciting time to be in communications. I honestly can’t wait to see where all this goes – and I’m lucky enough to be in a position to try and steer it a little.

Greenfield:  Thank you Christopher.

Barger:  Thank you, Dan – I appreciate the chance to talk with you.

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IBM's blogging efforts are that much more impressive given that I just read in Nancy Flynn's book Blog Rules that only four percent of major American corporations operate publicly available blogs.  It is to IBM's credit that they embrace blogging in such a big way.   I was also impressed with their ability to tolerate the dissenting views of individual employees, fully confident that the larger community of IBM bloggers will help present a balanced view of the company. 

If you are interested in sharing your company's path to blogging, please drop me a line.

Let me get back to you.

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