Navigating the Blogosphere

Culture is everything for a blogger. Your blog needs to be yours, but it also can't be too different from your corporate culture. That's what I learned from Philip Windley, former CIO of the state of Utah, now associate professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He started blogging in May 2002 and thought the blog would be a good way to exchange ideas.

But government (at any level) is not as free-wheeling as tech firms. If Windley posted something about his interest in enterprise instant messaging, much of his staff saw it as a directive to begin deploying the technology, rather than an invitation to discuss the idea.

He also discovered the hard way that blogging can create miscommunication and hurt morale. Windley encouraged his staff to blog, and one of his managers posted an entry about why an e-mail outage happened. The post was strictly factual, but the manager's staff felt betrayed by the publicity (other IT staff and some other government employees read it). Ultimately, that manager found it impossible to continue working with his staff and left his job. Oops.

To avoid these kinds of issues, Windley says, it's important to say why you're blogging in each of your posts, and to try not to say things that might generate calls from reporters.

Blog etiquette expert Margaret Mason advises executives to adopt the tone of their company in their blog. For a CIO at a youngish tech company, being very casual and hip might work. For a bank, street slang is off-limits.

Blogging isn't formal, but at most companies, business casual doesn't mean you can show up to the office in a tie-dye T-shirt, either. "Businesspeople treat blogging too informally," I learned from Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts, writing consultant and author of Business Writing for Dummies. "It's informal only in the sense that it's easy to post information. It's still a business form of communication."

"I don't think you can separate your opinions from your place of work," Weider told me. "I'm an executive here, and what I say reflects on the operation."

Weider calls his blog The CandidCIO, but he's not candid about everything. He doesn't comment about where he thinks his competitors are wrong. He does not ding his vendors. And he does not mention his staff. Those all seem like good guidelines to me.

But he doesn't avoid controversy: When a vendor offered him an all-expense-paid trip for two to a World Cup game in Germany, he put it in his blog and named the vendor, Avaya. That caused a stir, and even some press coverage. Weider says their working relationship remains strong. Avaya, though, makes a point of no longer paying for lunch.

People do get fired for blog posts. In fact, it has its own slang term - getting "dooced", named for blogger Heather Armstrong, who uses the pseudonym "Dooce" online, and was fired for satirizing her employer in her blog. Others who've been dooced:

• A Google employee who was critical of his employer

• A Web developer at Friendster who wrote about her work

• A librarian who blogged about copying music

Some Final Tips

• Keep it short. And skimmable.

• Get thick skin. Know that your blog will generate comments you might not want to hear. They might even be true. Be ready for them, and acknowledge them when it's appropriate.

• Blogs are forever, or reasonably close to it. Remember that blogs are permanent and searchable. If your blog is public, it's available via Google or Technorati or some other search site. I wouldn't swear, or share my thoughts about religion or politics. Or the food in the cafeteria, as one of Lindsell-Robert's clients did.

• Check grammar and spelling. Natasha Terk, a partner in writing consultancy Write It Well, reminds me that sloppiness reflects poorly on me and my company.

• The rules can be broken. I call this Schwartz's Law, after Jonathan Schwartz, the new CEO of Sun Microsystems.

More than one person has told me that Schwartz succeeds by breaking the rules. He manages to slash and burn his way through all the conventions - needling rivals like IBM, HP and Dell, chiding California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for using taxpayer money on something that can only be viewed in Windows Media Player, thumping his chest over Sun products, recounting a family vacation - and still get away with it. (It helps that Schwartz is a good writer.)

For most of us, blogs present a much smaller soapbox. But they're a useful platform, and one worth getting comfortable standing on.

Resources for New Bloggers

Books

Weblog Handbook By Rebecca Blood

Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers By Shel Israel and Robert Scoble

Blogging for Dummies By Brad Hill

Blogs

Debbie Weil's BlogWrite for CEOs www.blogwriteforceos.com

Business Blog Consulting www.businessblogconsulting.com