Category: Corporate Blogging

Snip from email/blog post from Tom Smith at CMP (InformationWeek is CMP publication, emphasis added by me):

Based on that experience, here are a few observations worth sharing on how
our blog presence is affecting our Web products (and therefore you): Readers are
distinguishing less and less between our blogs and our more traditional news
coverage. I’m not sure I agree with that or even think it’s the right set of
distinctions to be blurring, but we’re striving to embrace–rather than
fight–the trend.

Moreover, it’s becoming clear that the blog is a preferred means of
interacting with us. We’ve operated forums for years, but the ability for all of
you to write to us in the context of a blog–and see your comments right
alongside ours–seems to be fueling more of your feedback, which we appreciate.

The trend is your friend, especially since this seems to be a case where it fits into operational workflow.

IBM recently announced layoffs of 15,000. It also announced plans for a massive corporate blogging initiative. But SiliconValleyWatcher suggest that the two are connected at this post (emphasis added by me):

Early next week IBM will introduce the largest ever corporate blogging
initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become
online evangelists for the company.

The move comes on the heels of IBM’s most recent quarterly financial
report, which missed Wall Street expectations and led to announced
layoffs of 15,000, with more than 13,000 of those lost jobs in Europe.
The company hopes blogging could help stem further losses if it can
galvanize employees into an army of online evangelists for IBM’s
products and technologies.

I dunno about this. I can see how Scoble has shifted the tide of support for Microsoft, but this sounds like a wacky connection on first blush. That said, if there does turn out to be some statistical correlation (e.g., for revenue or for diminishing layoffs), it would be interesting to measure the marginal effects based on cost of blogging versus cost of traditional marketing.

Update (5/17/05): As related to blogging at IBM, here is their published corporate policy on the subject.

Fast Company has a listing of its favorite business blogs by women. Probably worth checking out. Of those on the list, I happened to meet Heather Hamilton in cyberspace while visiting her blog. As I recall mentioning to Heather, her blog was one of the few blogs I could find on the Net that covered anything regarding management consulting (Heather had a post on hiring past management consultants for corporate jobs at Microsoft). Now management consulting is not the most exciting of professions so it’s great that she gives the profession some respect. To digress a bit, I think in the late 90s there may have been a sitcom on management consulting (something like LA Consulting [?]). Even my past management consultant friends no longer remember what the long since defunct show was named … sigh.

Note: Although the Fast Company listing only references marketing, I think Heather’s blog covers both marketing and finance positions at Microsoft. Worthwhile clarification to make. For one thing, many Chicago b-school grads go to work at Microsoft in positions ranging from product management, product marketing, to controller functions. Don’t discriminate against finance!

Andrew Watson, Assistant Professor at the College of Business Administration at Northeastern University, posts that his proposal to teach a 1-credit hour course on business blogging has been accepted. This is the third activity at business schools I have seen. Prior I posted on business school activity at Michigan and Fordham. Congrats to Andrew! I applaud the effort. I have always thought that technology coverage at business schools could be stronger. Coverage of business blogging is a great add. Efforts like these should also help the grassroots efforts within corporations. No longer should b-school students be confusing blogging with instant messaging (IM) or other technologies.

It’s interesting how small a world Southern Methodist University is, but neither my wife (a professor in the business school at SMU) or I have met the Phantom Professor pointed out by Inside Higher Ed that may have just gotten dooced (i.e., fired for stuff written in her blog). Or perhaps the person was not dooced according to the SMU spokesperson in the blog entry I’m pointing to. From Inside Higher Ed:

But at SMU, at least some students and faculty members (and the
university’s legal office) did become aware of the Phantom Professor
and the many similarities between incidents at the Phantom’s campus and
at SMU. And in SMU’s Department of Corporate Communications and Public
Affairs, people recognized themselves and their colleagues. And word
got around that the author was probably Elaine Liner, a popular writing
instructor and a theater critic for a local alternative newspaper.

At about the same time this spring that people were guessing that
Liner was the Phantom, she was being told that the university no longer
needed her services after the spring semester. Liner and her many
student fans think that SMU is punishing her for expressing pointed
opinions about the university.

The blog post goes on to write:

University officials don’t see it that way. They won’t talk about
the specific decision not to continue offering courses to Liner, who
had taught at SMU since 2001, but they say it had nothing to do with
the blog and that they didn’t know for sure that the author was Liner.
But they acknowledge that they were worried about the blog.

Rita Kirk, the department chairwoman, says that she received
complaints about the blog from students and parents, and that she
consulted with university lawyers about what to do about it. Kirk
describes herself as a strong First Amendment supporter, but she says
she worries that the blog violated students’ privacy rights and upset
some students. “People need to remember that words can hurt,” Kirk says.

Tough call. Not enough facts from my vantage point to weigh in although I originally honed in on "worries that the blog violated students’ privacy rights and upset
some students". What also seems pertinent is that some of the Phantom Professor’s posts may have had direct negative marketing effects on the university. Regardless of freedom of speech rights, this does seem to be a tenuous position for the Phantom. I wonder if things would have turned out differently had the Phantom been blogging under their real name from the beginning. Seems like irreconcilable differences, but then presuming the posts have had negative marketing effects (note I have not read any of the Phantom’s posts), all parties would have had the opportunity to get things on track. Blogs should not just be venting mechanisms, especially for those with formal positions within an organization. They should be constructive too. If one is going to blog as the Phantom, then I suggest blogging as Peruna (SMU’s mascot) too from time to time.

Charlie O’Donnell has a post on the spin-up challenges for his business blogging course at the Fordham business school. The post, and the referenced BusinessWeek commentary on its recent magazine issue on business blogging, reflect the challenges in explaining business blogging to those new to the subject. On the surface, blogging technology seems extremely trivial. Yet there are actually multiple technologies and cultural phenomena in play related to blogging. The measures of business blogging success also vary widely by different people’s standards. Hard to discern fact from opinion at times. In any case, the layers of the subject material make succinct yet rich tutorials on business blogging more difficult.

As a side interest and as a form of giving back to the education system, I am currently exploring development of a blogging mini-course in conjunction with one of the business schools. Would like to explore more b-schools if I can find the time and proper entry point, partners, and twist for other universities. I just despise all of the recent press about business schools falling behind so I want to help. In my wildest fantasy, I would like to tie hypothetical blogging courses to helping non-profits through marshalling the skills and energy of business school students. So far for the school I’m working on the blogging mini-course idea has gotten a warm reception by key student body liason and university staff. Most b-schools are either well into their second semester or last quarter, however. This poses some tactical timing issues for introducing the subject matter and keeping the momentum going.

CooperKatz’s Micro Persuasion practice has secured a big corporate blogging engagement with Vespa scooters. Read more about it here. The story will also be covered in today’s Wall Street Journal.

One key note is Steve’s comment on peer-to-peer/citizen marketing. We will see new variants of this. The Internet has created a foundation for this (evidenced by peer-to-peer phenomena like eBay), but some of the new blogging (and surrounding) technologies take the possibilities up a notch. Methinks greenfields still exist in many areas.

Congrats, Steve!