As mentioned in the previous post, there are a slew of qualities and skills a corporate blog writer needs, among them credibility, communication skills, responsiveness and good judgment on what to share and what to keep confidential.
Who fits the bill? A CEO, a professional blogger, an employee from the PR department? A combination thereof?
Before a company begins a blog, they should first have executive, communications, business development, marketing, PR, and Web managers sit down and map out a plan for who will write and the goals (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009).
According to Flynn (2006), many companies just expand the job duties of their current marketing/PR staff. More and more companies are hiring professionals to write their blogs, their salaries ranging from $40,000 to $70,000 (sign me up!).
Some companies hire a chief blogger. This writer should have expertise and passion for the subject (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006). An employee undertaking a blog should be able to write in a natural voice, have time to post at least twice a week, have time to monitor comments, have listening and conversation skills, and commit themselves to the blog (Holtz & Demopoulos, 2006).
CEO or high-level executive blogs are on the rise. Flynn (2006) wrote that “…corporate reputations are in part defined by the chief executive officer, [so] it should come as no surprise that blogging by CEOs and other C-level executives is on the rise.” Before starting a blog, a CEO should consider how much time they can commit to it, if they have a point of view, how much patience they have, if they enjoy writing, have a thick skin, who will screen posts and comments, and if they’ve completed blog training (Flynn, 2006).
A corporate blog with more than one author is actually quite popular according to a study by Cho (2006). In a survey of 31 corporate blogs, the most popular format was multi-vocal (multiple authors), with 16. There were 14 uni-vocal blogs (single author), and four semi uni-vocal (includes guest authors).
Some corporate blogs aren’t written by the name associated with it, but passed off to PR staff – “…seemingly genuine words that are no more real that the quotes in company news releases.” (Solis & Breakenridge, 2009).
Some blogs don’t even pretend to be authored by a real, living human being. According to Holtz and Demopoulos (2006), character or fake blogs such as these usually fail. Miserably. An example of a failed character blog was one of rum mascot Captain Morgan. As cited in “Blogging for Business,” PR blogger Steve Rubel wrote in 2005, “Character blogs are a waste of time because a character is not and never will be human…blogging is a conversation. It’s about being real and transparent.”
Transparency is lost when a blog is written by “ghostwriters,” the next topic on Blog O’ Blogs.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. « Blog o' Blogs said
[...] blogs, corporate blogs, ghostwriters, honesty, PR, PRSA, public relations In the previous post on who should write a blog I brought up ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are writers whose work is passed off under another [...]