Filed under: Brand Marketing, Charlotte Ziems, Social media, Web Content, blog, ocu2008
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how an organization’s culture—or maybe “leadership style” is more accurate—can stimulate or hinder its employees from blogging. At Tendo, we help companies establish blogging programs and guidelines, but there’s more to motivating people to blog than giving them a set of rules. And many corporate blogging guidelines are geared toward the eager social media participant—the ones who need to be reminded of rules and legal implications and respectful behavior.
But what about the employees who are, well, shy? Afraid, even? Or who aren’t sure they have anything of value to add to the conversation? They may be smart and they may represent your company well and be perfectly social in face-to-face situations, but just aren’t as zealous on the Web. How does your leadership style encourage them to participate in your company’s online strategy?
My hunch is that two factors are critical in answering this question: trust (check out this post from Jeremiah Owyang, one of my favorite bloggers) and making sure employees feel they have permission—maybe “empowerment” is the right word.
I’ll post more about this in coming weeks, especially after attending the Online Community Unconference next week in Mountain View. In the meantime, send me your thoughts. Has your management style changed since your company instituted a blogging policy? Or do you manage people the same way whether they’re online or not? —Charlotte Ziems, VP, client engagement
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, email address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
