Officially. Actually, I'm someone who has "blogger in chief" on his business cards, so I'm hardly one to speak ill of such an article; I'm an example of the phenomenon.
Blogging Becomes A Corporate Job; Digital 'Handshake'?
In its short lifespan, blogging has largely been a freewheeling exercise in online self-expression. Now it is also becoming a corporate job.
A small but growing number of businesses are hiring people to write blogs, otherwise known as Web logs, or frequently updated online journals. Companies are looking for candidates who can write in a conversational style about timely topics that would appeal to customers, clients and potential recruits....
Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield's chief executive, says he plans to hire one or two additional full-time bloggers within the next two years. "The blogs give us what we call a handshake with consumers, a bond of loyalty and mutual trust that's different than the typical selling relationship, where it's all about price," Mr. Hirshberg says. "With the blogs, we are giving a little bit more access to us as a people with a mission."
The notion of a corporate blog is a bit of a contradiction: Some paid bloggers get a long leash, as far as the topics and tone of their postings. Stonyfield Farms' Ms. [Christine] Halvorson [who writes four blogs for the company] says her job is unsupervised. "That doesn't mean you can give away proprietary info," she adds.
Stonyfield's blogs are an interesting mix: one (The Bovine Bugle) focuses on one of the organic farms that supply the company; another (Daily Scoop) is more about the company, though it's updated very erratically; and there are three lifestyle-related blogs. Together, they're a petting zoo of public-facing company blogs types.
Two things strike me about this story, and the Stonyfield blogs.
What strikes me is that there's a significant gap emerging between blogs at high-tech companies like Sun and Microsoft, and blogging efforts at other (particularly food and consumer goods) companies. Tech company blogs are mainly about... tech. That may seem obvious, but the people who read the blogs of Sun Java developers are, more likely than not, other Java programmers. You may not have many readers if you're blogging about chip design or Web security, but they're all going to be passionate and knowledgeable, and care about your work.
If, on the other hand, you make paper towels, what do you talk about? How many users of paper towels will keep coming back to a blog about paper towel manufacturing? Ditto for dog food, diapers, eyeliner, cardboard boxes... the tech blogging model doesn't scale, and the content approach doesn't transfer. Lifestyle-oriented blogs may seem like a comfortable middle ground, but I think it will remain to be seen how well they work
Second, it strikes me that a smart company would hire a blogger who can work as a kind of documentarian/ethnographer, telling the story of the company from the bottom up, rather than the top down. This would be a person who isn't stuck talking just about one part of a company, but whose job involves going everywhere, collecting interesting stories, talking some (but not too much) about how stuff gets made, how products are designed, how CEO talks are written, how shareholder meetings are organized, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Big corporations are hugely varied, and someone with a sharp eye for interesting stories and personalities, an ability to explain technology and business, and a willingness to travel a lot, could do something fascinating.
Daniel Pink recently observed that a surprising number of products in stores like Whole Foods have stories on their labels: stories about how this little artisan bakery was founded, about how this family got into organic cheese-making, about how that wine is donating part of its profits to a charity. These companies aren't trying to be cute, he said; they're trying to get you to connect to the product. (Indeed, Stonyfield CEO Gary Hirschberg makes the connection between these little stories and blogs in a recent interview.)
Blogging ought to be a medium for those kinds of stories. It should be a means for making connections between people and companies-- not by presenting a sleek, unified corporate front, but by revealing the terrific diversity of a big company, or outlining the distinctive culture of a small one. These are the kinds of things that are better communicated through stories than mission statements, that are made tangible by having one observant person writing in their own voice, rather than that of a committee.
[via brainwagon]
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