This morning (Sunday 12/6/05) BBC Radio 4s Broadcasting House programme ran an item about blogging and how business is getting involved:
"The world of weblogs, blogging to those in the know, used to be one where individuals reigned - but Chris Ledgard has been finding out how corporations have started to get in on the act, perhaps even the BBC."
It included the increasingly common tale of an employee sacked for blogging about work - in this case the salutory tale of Heather Armstrong of dooce.com - a web designer who was fired after writing about work.
The piece suggested that corporate blogging is 'not quite blogging', Award winning blogger Tom Coates, PlasticBag, suggested that the best people talking for companies are the people expert and familiar enough with their products to say something meaningful. He added that if a communications professional is hired to write about at company or product then the blogspere is going to be cynical.
The piece concluded that the clever thing for companies to do is to work with employees who want to write a blog. It quoted the case of Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, who employs a blogger and lets employees blog:
"It's only when we become humble and recognise that were just people selling to people that blogging will become the mainstream, companies how try to employer this tool to talk about how cute and wonderful we are going to fail. Tell it straight; share the dirty laundry as well as the good stuff."
matt
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