Building Internal Support for a Corporate Blog
If most corporate communications professionals recognize the value of corporate blogs, why have so few large companies implemented one?
Many obstacles stand in the way. Concerns over ROI, time restraints and fear come to mind. In formulating a corporate blogging strategy, we tend to place a great deal of emphasis on our external audiences. But building internal support is equally challenging. I don’t just mean CEO buy-in. I mean reaching out to various stakeholders within the organization.
A successful blog requires understanding an organization’s dynamics and sensitivity to the needs of the principals.
No doubt this is common sense advice, but where do you begin? From experience, I appreciate the need for thought leaders to articulate the vision, evangelists to spread the word, mediators to build consensus and believers to make it happen. But corporate communications can be a catalyst and a key agent for managing the process.
As change agents, it may be useful for us to consider the following questions:
- Who should own the blog and drive its content? PR, marketing, product (services) Development or a mix?
- How will reader feedback be used?
- What role do HR and the legal department play in setting boundaries?
- Where does customer support fit in? How will it absorb questions that involve billing or require technical assistance?
- How can the sales team take advantage of reader feedback?
- How active should the marketing group be in preserving the brand, but respecting the need to avoid “marketing speak?”
- How do you solicit IT to license the right software and to make sure it is scalable and secure?
- How do you engage product or service development teams to ensure their consistent participation as advisors and contributors?
- How do you enlist the support of employees to contribute or create their own personal or product blogs?
When I was helping implement EarthLink’s social media strategy, I sat down with executives and a wide cross section of the company to understand their needs and concerns. I developed surveys to assess their appreciation of social media and their usage patterns. I worked with the legal department to define parameters. I met with IT engineers to understand what was feasible and of course sought senior management buy-in.
It may be helpful to view your efforts as a campaign and consider the following steps:
- Assess what your competition is doing
- Monitor the conversation about your company
- Define your message (why you need a blog)
- Set expectations and key metrics
- Identify your key internal stakeholders
- Enlist allies to help spread the word
- Reach out to skeptics and address their concerns
Taking these steps will put you in a good position to make the case to senior management.
But as the weight loss ads always say, your individual results may vary. Implementing these guidelines won’t guarantee final approval for a blog, but ignoring them will ensure failure and represent a lost opportunity for corporate communications to take a leadership role in formulating a company’s new media strategy.
Let me get back to you.
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You started talking about a "corporate blog" and introduced the subject of HR involvement. So I go, "Right, got it he's talking about internal marketing here" and for a while it all fitted into place. Your questions about HR, marketing, reader feedback etc all made sense. Then you dive into "customer support" so I'm back to square one.
Blogs are a great internal marketing tool. Because it is maketing and the marketing department manage that, there's no debate about who owns it - Marketing does. The starting point is your Brand Model and the point of the exercse is to get everyone (employees, partners, distributors, investors, suppliers) to understand the Brand Promise and commit to playing their part in its delivery. Coaching is another facet of the same thing. Measurement success is rrelatively simple, but the KPIs might vary from "partcipation" to "promise delivery success".
The marketing department will elicit material from all members of the management team who will in turn use the idea of contributing as a tool in their Brand Promise sell-in to their department.
I have run similar exercises with organisations in different parts of the world. The model has differed widely and ranges from a blog-like element on the sign in home page on corpoarte LANs to corporate radio and TV where contributions are made via mobile phones from different retail outlets or regional offices and broadcast live on-air.
Maybe its just a language thing - as George Bernard Shaw said "two Nations separated by a common language", but when I see "corporate blog" I think in the context set by "corprate TV" which is an internal network where I come from, so customer service issues are perifferal. (Comment this)