If you decide to allow your best and brightest to blog about your organization or company, you had better really trust them because the moment you release them into the blogosphere, you need to remain completely hands-off.
I wandered into Trevor Cook’s blog, Corporate Engagement, and his post entitled Business blogs get media coverage down under. I read his post and clicked through to the mentioned article Wag the Blog and read. Here’s the reply I posted in his comments.
I think that the article is brilliant but it really does go half-measure. Let’s say you find that evangelist and you trust him and you know he’s the one. Okay, and then after you set him free in the blogosphere, you start giving him mixed-messages and start yanking the choke collar he never knew he wore.
Well, that trustworthy lover of the company can start to sour and begin to feel used and untrusted.
What is really takes is “Giving that freedom” which always is a “white-knuckle ride for everyone involved.” And if the admin team isn’t willing to allow the blogger to speak openly and honestly even after you stack the deck, then it is true that it will be merely “called PR and marketing.” If you click on my article Effective PR Blogging, I talk a little bit about it. Maybe not enough. I need to ponder and think about it more.
