Here are three more reasons for your organization or business to care about bloggers and blogging. Find five more reasons in the first part of this article.
- In the same vein, as a company, you can search other business and company blogs for competitive and market intelligence you might not find available otherwise. Keep track of the blogs written by your competitors, their employees, and any industry sources that may blog about your industry, products, or customers. Perhaps one of those millions of bloggers, in the United States alone, has competitive information for you.
- Since your employees are likely blogging, your company will want to establish policies and guidelines that require your employees to take care about what they express about your company and customers online. Blog posts can live forever. Once a blog post is picked up by a search engine such as Google, any potential customer or employee can find and read the blogs your employees post. Even if an employee deletes a post, archived versions stay online in locations such as the Wayback Machine. Thus, it is better for you to provide guidelines on the front end rather than later when you are unhappy with an employee’s post.
At the same time, I seriously caution you that you should not infringe on the free speech of your employees. Their personal and enthusiastic support of your products, your customers, and your company, in their unique voices, cannot be replaced by public relations and marketing efforts. Their encouraged and supported interaction with the blogosphere gives your company an image and reputation you can't buy through advertising.
This presumes that you have created a work environment and culture that motivates, inspires, recognizes, and retains employees. While their interaction with the world will not always be perfectly positive, you can generally depend on their support.
In the true spirit of blogging, find information about corporate blogging policies through this blog by The Big Blog Company. Want to develop a policy? See this excellent source for blogging policies and Charlene Li's Blogging Policy Samples, provided by - whom do you think? Other bloggers, of course. - Potential employees are blogging, too. In fact About.com’s Alison Doyle recommends that a blog can help job searchers find jobs. She also emphasizes, however, that the wrong kind of blog or blog entries, can also turn potential employers off – big time. You do search for the name of your candidates online, don’t you? The search helps with background checking, and gives you more insight into the character, skills, qualifications, and activities of your potential employees. Their personal blogs are an even richer source of information.
You can learn more about corporate blogging at - what else? - a dedicated blog. See Corporate Blogging Blog. Blogging is a superb communication and information linking tool. Blogging is here to stay. Get on board for a ride through the blogosphere, the milieu and culture of the bloggers and the blogs. Your company or organization, your employees, and your customers will thank you for utilizing the power of blogs and bloggers, personal publishing for now and the future.
Want more reasons businesses need to pay attention to blogging? Find five more reasons in the first part of this article.
