A collection of stuff

I went to a talk called “Practical Tips for Business Blogs” delivered by Jerry Stevenson from Buck Consultants as part of the International Association of Business Communicators seminar in Toronto. I’m not going to comment too extensively on it because Jerry has made the entire presentation available online.

I will highlight a couple of the things he mentioned, though. One of the biggest concerns that an organization faces when  deciding whether to make a blog or not is that people will make negative comments about you, the organization, the products, etc. but Jerry points out that people who want to make negative comments will make negative comments through one of a million channels they can use. Wouldn’t you prefer that they made those comments in a channel that you can control somewhat, in a way in which you can respond?

Not all organizations will benefit from a blog, but perhaps events will. A blog doesn’t have to go on forever and ever. It can be time limited to the duration of an event, campaign or program as another communication tool. And when that program or event is over, you simply archive it an wrap it up.

Also, blogs don’t have to be tools to communicate outwards, but to allow people involved with the organization to have a way to exchange experiences and points of view on work projects and programs. And maybe funny videos to keep them from clogging the internal mail system.

It’s also important to agree from the beginning what kind of conversations are wanted in the blog, and which ones will be avoided; how far to let people go with the comments and when the moderators will cut something out. Also, from the beginning, a good set of success parameters must be defined, as well as how they are going to be measured.

If people from staff will be posting, it’s not a bad idea to let them know how to behave and what you’re expecting from them, in the way that Hill and Knowlton have done.

I went to a business blogging seminar organized by the International Association of Business Communicators and there was dinner! It was good, the desserts too.