It’s 10 PM, Do You Know If Your Employees Are Blogging?
To this day, I can still recall the question that always began a local newscast: “It's
Ten PM, do you know where your children are?” As a kid growing up in suburban New Jersey, I always found the question a bit disturbing, almost creepy. Did parents really not know where their children were or what they were doing? Were those unattended kids in some kind of danger? The station was clearly suggesting that parents needed to assert more control and that a little less freedom was far better than too much.
This memory serves as a perfect analogy for me now that I am a vice president of corporate communications; When it comes to employee blogging, how much freedom should employees have? Does management really need to know who is blogging, when they are blogging and what they are saying about the company?
In the old days, all corporate communications channels went through the PR department. PR had the messages. PR directed the messengers. Everything was centralized, formalized and contained.
How different is today's world of employee blogging. I don’t have time to monitor what everyone is saying. Employees must find their own individual voice. I may not always be wild about what they might say, but I am confident that the process and the wider community will keep individuals in check. Outrageous statements by renegade employees lose credibility. And personal expression does not mean carte blanche to say anything. Employees are still employees beholden to company policies and codes of conduct.
So as we send our employees out into the blogosphere, we need to set the boundaries for engagement and determine our level of comfort for transparency and candor. Should employees who talk about your company go through formal training? Should they use the same templates? Should their comments be approved beforehand? Should we dictate what they say?
Too much control and you lose blogging’s essence; too little and you lack consistency and risk a lawsuit or a PR crisis. As for me, employees should go through some kind of training to understand what is expected of them and appreciate the rules of the blogosphere. Not everyone is suited for blogging, and some employees will need to be grounded for not following the rules. But I don’t think everyone should use the same template, and it is not mandatory that every comment be reviewed. Employees should ask if they have questions or doubts.
When it comes to social media, we are no longer in total control. Loss of control -- that's the toughest lesson a parent and a manager must learn.
As Christopher Barger, IBM’s chief blogger, told me: "The audience now controls your brand and how you’re perceived – not the messenger. Every single person can respond. Perception is controlled by how the audience is receiving, not how we are telling."
So whether it is 10:00 PM, 6:00 AM or noon, I don’t know if employees are blogging. I need to trust that they will act responsibly and treat their colleagues, bosses and the public at large with respect. Of course, not being a parent, that may be a lot easier to say than do.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: PR; Corporate Communications; Blogging; Employees;
This memory serves as a perfect analogy for me now that I am a vice president of corporate communications; When it comes to employee blogging, how much freedom should employees have? Does management really need to know who is blogging, when they are blogging and what they are saying about the company?
In the old days, all corporate communications channels went through the PR department. PR had the messages. PR directed the messengers. Everything was centralized, formalized and contained.
How different is today's world of employee blogging. I don’t have time to monitor what everyone is saying. Employees must find their own individual voice. I may not always be wild about what they might say, but I am confident that the process and the wider community will keep individuals in check. Outrageous statements by renegade employees lose credibility. And personal expression does not mean carte blanche to say anything. Employees are still employees beholden to company policies and codes of conduct.
So as we send our employees out into the blogosphere, we need to set the boundaries for engagement and determine our level of comfort for transparency and candor. Should employees who talk about your company go through formal training? Should they use the same templates? Should their comments be approved beforehand? Should we dictate what they say?
Too much control and you lose blogging’s essence; too little and you lack consistency and risk a lawsuit or a PR crisis. As for me, employees should go through some kind of training to understand what is expected of them and appreciate the rules of the blogosphere. Not everyone is suited for blogging, and some employees will need to be grounded for not following the rules. But I don’t think everyone should use the same template, and it is not mandatory that every comment be reviewed. Employees should ask if they have questions or doubts.
When it comes to social media, we are no longer in total control. Loss of control -- that's the toughest lesson a parent and a manager must learn.
As Christopher Barger, IBM’s chief blogger, told me: "The audience now controls your brand and how you’re perceived – not the messenger. Every single person can respond. Perception is controlled by how the audience is receiving, not how we are telling."
So whether it is 10:00 PM, 6:00 AM or noon, I don’t know if employees are blogging. I need to trust that they will act responsibly and treat their colleagues, bosses and the public at large with respect. Of course, not being a parent, that may be a lot easier to say than do.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: PR; Corporate Communications; Blogging; Employees;
You referenced the newscast from back in the day, another one was 'paper lets anything be printed on it', this goes for HTML text boxes too. (Comment this)