I have a couple of half-day workshops on blog strategy coming up, one at Hitachi Data Systems and the other at CNET. In preparing for them, both companies have asked me about the issue of team vs. individual blogs. This also has emerged as an issue over at Sharpcast where I am consulting. It dawns on me that this issue is cause for angst in many companies.
Should employees who are going to blog about their jobs be organized by product group, department or workgroup? Should the URL have the company name in it? Does it matter if it is hosted on Wordpress, Typepad, Movable Type or a company server?
When I first started hearing this question, I used to say it really doesn't matter. Now, I would adjust that to say it matter less than many companies realize, but there are pluses and minuses for a group blog vs individual blogs.
Pluses:
- I requires less time of each blogger.
- Each blogger can give a different perspective to the same project, product or service.
- Group blogs fit into a neat tidy ball with the existing web site.
Minuses:
- Your most passionate readers rarely go to your actual blog. They subscribe to feeds and read what you have to say in plain text. All that look and feel work you might do on a company blog, is like dressing up to entertain an occasional house guest. For your real friends, you probably appear more casually.
- Most reader follow bloggers, not blogs. In short, if five people share a blogspace, each of them will develop their own followers who often skip entries by co-bloggers at the same site. I scanned my feeds this morning and was surprised at how few group blogs have reach prominence. With the exception of TechDirt, my short list of daily "must reads" has no group blogs. When I have time there are a few others I enjoy over at the Corante stable.
- In fact, I think Mike Arrington has selected a wiser course. He started with TechCrunch, then branched into CrunchNotes, MobileCrunch and CrunchTalk. Each blog s written by a different person.
In short, my advice to companies is to spawn a culture that encourages people to blog about their work. Let everyone start their own blog wherever they wish. Maybe use a company site to point to list their individual URLs. Encourage synergy between blogging employees. Let them link to each other when there's relevancy. That linking will help their rankings of course.
My disclaimer, is that this advice may be obsolete in time. Companies seem more comfortable with group blogs than individual blogs. There is no reason why, with tweaking, some passionate, informative group blogs will become wildly popular.
