First, I attended the CMO Leadership Forum on Tues. with some Tendo colleagues and heard sound bites like these:

• “Fear of waste is more prevalent than fear of price in recessionary times. ROI is key.” -Bill Pearce, SVP & CMO of Del Monte Foods (who also explained why investing during times of recession is the best marketing tactic)
• To retain customers, focus on “less eyeballs and more mouthfuls“, because it’s more cost-effective than going out and finding new customers - Umberto Luchini, Marketing Svcs. Dir., Skyy Spirits
• “Marketing is the new finance” – Ann Lewnes, SVP Corp. Mktg for Adobe, referring to how marketing needs to rely on ROI and measurability to support its campaigns.

The second reason I’ve got ROI on the brain is that I am a 2009 Fellow for the Society for New Communications Research (or SNCR) and as such, I get to contribute to a research project with some pretty interesting folks. The project, which is beginning to gain momentum, focuses on social media metrics and measurement. Our project overview points to what often appears as a disconnect between what an organization sets as goals and what they actually measure-for instance, so many of Tendo’s clients say they want to “get closer to our customers” but the primary metric they use to gauge effectiveness is click-throughs from the blog to the corporate website. What’s the true definition of the word “engagement” and how do you measure its ROI? While our project is focused on social media metrics, I think that many of our findings will apply to metrics for content and communication. Call me weird, but this stuff is really fascinating to me.

I’ll keep you posted on the status of the project-right now we’re gathering names of companies that want to participate as case study subjects and/or survey participants. Our research results should be out by the end of the year.

In the meantime, I’ll point you to one of the “pretty interesting folks” on my research team-Katie Payne. I met Katie at SNCR’s NewComm Forum last month and can’t wait to read her book “Measuring Success-The Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Measuring Public Relationships“. Though much of what she writes and studies is framed in the context of PR–which isn’t what Tendo does–I do think it’s relevant to any form of communication (Web content and social media included) in which you’re using words to establish or deepen a connection. Katie founded a consulting firm focused on measurement–KD Paine and Partners–and also writes a blog here.

Next week, I’ll focus on video–Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, gave a great presentation at the CMO Leadership Forum on how marketers can use YouTube’s tools. Plus I’ll tell you about a cool new “video case study” service that Tendo’s developed.

Alas, the rules and techniques and best practices for corporate blogs are still being defined. To clarify your options, Tendo offers the following 10 issues to consider before diving in:

Blogging culture

Let’s face it, some company cultures are mistrustful and dysfunctional while others are highly functioning and open. If you don’t know where your company fits in that spectrum, blogging will certainly bring it into focus. Corporate blogging offers a more intimate view into a company than does a brochure or piece of collateral. In the blogosphere, your customers define your brand, not you. So you’ve got to ask yourself if your company’s culture will foster and encourage a blogging program or fear and hinder it.

Internal vs. external

Many companies establish an internal blog first—so that their posts are visible only to other employees. This allows you to identify employees who have a knack for writing, an affinity for representing your brand, and the passion necessary for a successful external blog.  Not to mention defining the processes and systems necessary for blogging. If you’re not quite ready to dive into blogging, creating an internal blog lets you put a toe in the water.

“First and foremost, know that corporate blogging is different from corporate marketing communications. If your blog content reads like a press release, or outlines the specs of a new product that’s being launched, it won’t succeed.”

Individual or group blog?

Decide whether your blog will come from one individual or a group of individuals. The obvious benefit to a group blog is that it distributes the posting burden across a number of people; the challenge to a group blog is cohesion—posts need to be more planned, e.g., themes identified and timing set, so that the posts hold together. An individual blog doesn’t really have that challenge since it reflects one person’s perspective and personality.

Guidelines

Corporate blogging guidelines shouldn’t stifle the desire to blog but should offer clarity regarding dos and don’ts. You can find a great comparison of corporate blogging guidelines here.

Staff

Depending on the number of people who’ve lined up to blog, you might want to think about whether and when it makes sense to hire an editor or contract out the function. If your blog isn’t that active, someone in your communications department can act as an editor, but once posts are more frequent and comments grow, think about recruiting a community manager and/or strategist. This is an emerging role that encompasses several functions and spans all forms of social media (not just blogs). For the corporate blog, a community manager would do the following: manage and edit blog posts, monitor comments, work with your company’s personnel to develop bloggers, and monitor and participate in the blogosphere for mentions of your company. You can find a great (and growing) list of people who hold these positions here.

Leadership

Again, depending on whether you end up hiring a community manager/strategist, you’ll need to think about how a blogging program changes your company’s approach to leadership. Managing an employee who blogs is a bit more complicated than managing one who doesn’t.  For instance, a manager might need to either foster and encourage blog posts and ideas or monitor and temper them in a way that wouldn’t be needed if the employee weren’t blogging. Think of the difference between managing an internal vs. an external employee. It’s a slight distinction, but not something that can be ignored.

Frequency of posts

This is probably the biggest stumbling block to corporate blogging success, but it’s a proven fact—the less frequently your company posts, the fewer people will read the blog. To keep your audience’s attention, Tendo recommends posting at least two to three times a week.

Time Commitment

Some might say that writing each blog post doesn’t take long at all, but the post is just the tip of the iceberg. To regularly express compelling insight and opinion and thought leadership, you have to read other blogs, monitor other information sources, attend events, or participate in regular conversation around your topic, not to mention spend time commenting on others’ blogs. Corporate blogging is not just about self-expression—it’s about developing  the “self” to express.

Comments

Remember that a blog is not a mouthpiece—it’s a conversation. It’s important not only to allow comments, but also to solicit, monitor, and respond to them. The bloggers who gain the most traffic are those who are vocal not just on their own blog, but in comments to other blogs as well.

Content

First and foremost, know that corporate blogging is different from corporate marketing communications. If your blog content reads like a press release, or outlines the specs of a new product that’s being launched, it won’t succeed. Blog content is more personal and should reflect the individual and, as such, needs to be authentic, transparent, entertaining, and compelling. Your corporate bloggers shouldn’t be afraid of offering personal information, nor should they think that every post needs to be a tome.

I proposed the topic about which I last blogged—Do Corporate Blogs Require a New Approach to Corporate Leadership? Blogging requires a level of authenticity that some corporate cultures might not support. We might have all had management training at some point in our careers, but that was before the advent of social media. In today’s connected world, do you lead your team differently than you did when Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Google/Yahoo didn’t exist?

I was pleased when about 10 people showed up for the discussion. As was explained at the beginning of the day, if no one attends your session, it just means no one was interested in the topic, e.g., don’t take it personally. Yeah, right. I was equally pleased that everyone stayed for the whole hour. We didn’t focus solely on leadership for blogging, as you’ll see from these key take-aways:

Roles. Corporate blogging is best achieved when the company hires a community manager, a person with strong editorial, management, and communications skills who can work with internal employees to encourage their blogs and manage them against guidelines, plan content, edit blog posts as needed/requested, sometimes write blog posts and comments, etc. etc. One community manager in the group shared stories of the challenge of getting executives to blog on a regular basis.

Internal vs. External Blogging. Two of the people in my discussion manage internal blogs that are kept that way since their communities include developers or research scientists who are blogging about company trade secrets. But the internal blogs are also used as a training ground to identify employees who’d be especially effective blogging externally. Once they’ve identified potential external bloggers, the community managers work with the employees to make sure they understand that blogging to the world requires different content than blogging internally (for one, it can’t contain sensitive trade secrets). And the manager will moderate an external blog more stringently than an internal one.

Motivating the discussion. Some companies are starting blogs and don’t have a huge audience; others have the huge audience and just need the bloggers. Regardless of your audience size, the community is better galvanized if it includes feedback and incentives and positive reward. Use other employees to comment back on blogs; measure and publicize page views for blog posts; pick a “comment of the week” and promote it; post a blog that extracts text from comments to encourage more conversation. Being a community manager is a bit like being a party host—you have to seed the audience and encourage their attendance and provide a nice environment for their interaction.

Leadership. In the end, we did decide that blogging requires a different approach to management. Blogging doesn’t work in a highly controlled culture and necessitates a more inclusive leadership style that invites participation.

What’s your corporate blogging experience? Does your company employ a community manager or have an internal blog? How do you motivate and seed the discussion? —Charlotte Ziems, VP, client engagement

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