Lessons Learned in Corporate Blogging

In brief:

• Lessons learned in corporate blogging from LinkedIn’s corporate blogger, who also links to a post by a blogger at EMC Corp. about their lessons learned

Face it — if you don’t already have a corporate blogging program, you’re probably going to have one in the next couple of years. It’s a little like the early days of the fax machine — at first, people asked “why do I need one,” but after awhile, the question changed to “how did I ever live without one?”

Maybe the biggest hurdle to starting a corporate blogging program is getting over the fear of the unknown. So take some advice from people who have traveled this path already — here are some tips gleaned from corporate bloggers at LinkedIn and EMC Corp.:

• Good in-house bloggers will rise to the top because they want to — you can’t force it


• Have an internal corporate blog “playground” for people to get up to speed


• Titles have nothing to do with who will be a good blogger, or for that matter, who will most effectively use blogging to further corporate objectives


• Keep corporate sensibilities to a minimum — we rail on this blog all the time about corporate-speak, and the point here is that no one wants to read a blog filled with corporate-speak or written by someone so constrained in what they can say. Create policies to limit damage, not to hinder creativity


• Social media means “social”: — make sure you foster and encourage the conversation.