Motivations for Corporate Blogging

ringfinger writes "Ross Mayfield just posted an interesting blog essay entitled Fear, Greed and Social Software that examines the motivations (Fear and Greed) for corporate blogging. How many slashdotters blog for their companies? Do their companies fear that they might say something embarrasing? Or are they filled with greed for the additional exposure it generates?"

Comments

IBM encourages company blogging

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been several new blog efforts at IBM recently.

1. They provide internal blogs to everyone. Anyone within the company can view any employees blog. Confidential material relating to specific works in development to you are not permitted though as the controls on the blogs are rather weak. But still, there are blogs from both personal and professional topics hosted internally.

2. Recently guidelines for public blogging were released. They were rather straightforward and obvious in the following tone:
- Post freely, be helpful, seek help
- Don't post trade secrets, use best judgement
- Don't engage in online arguments, once again, be helpful

It appears they would have us out there talking about anything and all things, including company products, helping others with our products, etc.

Of course, it's written with perspective of "help the greater good, don't make us look bad", but I still think it's a great step forward and a proactive approach to forwarding the community.

Here's my last required gem:

These are my opinions and not those of IBM.

Forget why they DO - tell me why they DON'T

[Brento]

I read Macromedia's blogs religiously because I find 'em very interesting. It helps me build a personal, emotional connection to software. The guys behind the software are real people with ideas and struggles just like me, and that gives me warm and fuzzy feelings.

Why would any company not want to establish personal, emotional connections to their software?

Yeah, sure, there's risks involved if your employees reveal corporate secrets or turbulence, but if you trust them enough with your source code, why would you think they wouldn't be smart enough to walk the line with blogs as well? If you don't trust your employees enough to blog, it doesn't say anything about your employees - it says something about your paranoia and your inability to hire reliable staff.

(And yes, I have a personal blog, and no, I'm not allowed to talk about company stuff in it, and yes, I've been disciplined for even coming close to the line.)