My article for Revolution Magazine has been published. It feels like I wrote it months ago, which I guess is one of the big differences between blogging and writing for a print magazine. Anyway, this is the text of what I wrote:
A couple of recent conversations got me thinking about the potential for business blogging. I was talking to a middle manager in a FTSE 100 company, who was unfamiliar with the term “blog” despite being a fairly heavy Internet user. The term had just passed him by. Then I sat down with a group of digital natives who’d gathered to talk about their Internet usage and interests, who hardly read any blogs at all. Is blogging a minority pursuit, or is it something that companies could make more of?
It would seem like there are plenty of companies that could benefit from a decent blog. Agency.com has certainly had its share of trials over its own corporate blogging efforts. How many organisations today would cite a lack of customer trust as one of their business issues? How many would benefit from a dialogue with their customers about how they’re doing, new product ideas, or their service issues? Blogging is an ideal way to meet these needs, but great examples are few and far between. My friend, who works for Avis, recently wrote a piece from his water-logged Oxfordshire home, sharing his advice on driving in wet conditions. His company’s blog is straightforward, honest, and winning awards. The stories of Wildlife Direct’s workers in the Congo are more dramatic and emotive than any soap opera. But these are rare examples.
When I looked around this week, most companies’ blogs were too boring and corporate for words (I guess that might be expected from Boeing), or disconnected from what the company does - and therefore any reason for having a blog in the first place. Who’s really interested in what the guys at an Spreadshirt watched on TV last night? Is it really a good idea to talk about the staff party on a site that anyone can see, like I saw one top London agency had done? Microsoft putting its employees’ blog URLs on their business cards is trying a bit harder, but are any of them worth reading?
I can see several causes for this disappointment. Some companies get worried about what investors, regulators and competitors are told, and start to control who can speak in public. If they’ve put 3 layers of sign-off in their web editorial process, a tool that allows staff to just start writing and getting published must sound like anarchy. In other companies, the people with interesting things to say are just too busy. The blog is left to the enthusiasts, and most of them are just a little bit on the geeky side. Lack of innovation is another challenge: getting a company blog going is so much more than just installing the software and creating some user accounts. Adding a link to your blog to your website’s page footer does not constitute a strategy.
Perhaps whatever companies do with blogging, most people wouldn’t be that interested in what they have to say, but it feels to me like a lot of companies are missing a trick.
