The Tendo View

Your organization has a blog. You’ve even got some employees who are eager to put pen to digital paper and produce content. But there’s a difference between blah content and the “I’m-subscribing-to-this-blogger-because-he’s-got-interesting-views” content. The writer of the latter often attracts regular readers, engages readers in conversation (not only on his or her own blog, but also on other people’s blogs), and posts prolifically.

How do you find these types of bloggers? And what’s the best way to manage them?

Model bloggers

Before we get to that, let’s look at some examples of executives who effectively engage the blogosphere. Chuck Hollis is vice president of global marketing CTO  at EMC. He’s been at EMC for 15 years in a variety of technical and marketing positions. In other words, Hollis knows his stuff. He’s comfortable writing easy-to-read posts about everyday life (such as “What iPads did to my family”) and is not afraid to state his views about EMC activities.

Take, for example, EMC’s bidding war against NetApp for Data Domain last year. Although some company executives may stay silent on such company activities, preferring to speak through their PR or legal teams, Hollis posted a blog about his personal perspective of EMC’s move. Not surprisingly, that post attracted multiple comments.

Hollis’ opponent at HP (they often cross swords on each other’s blogs) is Calvin Zito, author of HP’s Around the Storage Block blog, and StorageWorks marketing communications manager. Like Hollis, Zito has held a variety of positions in marketing and engineering.

Zito is a prolific writer with a great writing style, and commands a regular audience—including Hollis.

Ideal traits

Judging by their blog posts and the frequency of their updates, both Hollis and Zito are comfortable writers and are quick to analyze their markets. The results are thoughtful and engaging blog posts. Hollis and Zito are quick to respond to reader comments—both complimentary and not—and engage with readers of other blogs by placing comments there.

Once you’ve identified executives who have the necessary traits to write blogs, how do you manage them?

You don’t.

Opinion writers

View such corporate bloggers as you would opinion writers on newspapers. By all means run a blog that is a mouthpiece for your organization, if that makes you feel more comfortable. However, encourage other voices to speak as well.

It’s not possible to silence people who have strong views, but B2B readers are mature enough to decide for themselves whether these bloggers are stating their own views and not those of their employers. (Some bloggers state this on their blogs, particularly if they’re hosting the blog themselves.) Of course, it helps when these bloggers are senior executives and not entry-level employees.

It is better to have employees who are able to engage with readers and get the blogosphere talking than to run a bland corporate blog that commands no attention whatsoever. You’re now in the publishing game, so be prepared to loosen the reins.