One of the elements crucial to corporate social media initiatives are the individuals who blog for organizations. Often these individuals become somewhat official spokespersons for the organization, but that’s what they’re supposed to be correct? It’s the humanization thing. What are the downsides though?
Recently I was on a teleconference panel with a few organizations. One of the panelists talked about all the major social media initiatives that were handled by a member of their staff, let’s call them John. John had become their spokesperson. Previously they never had one. The relationships that John built within communities online (and offline) were invaluable to the organization. During the Q&A, the questions mostly focussed on technology issues and we ran out of time before I could ask, “What happens when John leaves?” From the earlier discussion it would seem that if they left their entire community outreach efforts would vanish and so would a portion of sales.
Another issue related to business blogging is ego and internal politics. In some cases a junior staffer suddenly becomes an invaluable asset, sometimes that goes to your head. However, most of the corporate bloggers I know firmly have their egos in check, but it could be an issue. When Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft one of the questions that often came up was what do others in the company think of his profile? Here was a person that recently joined the company and suddenly is mentioned in the same breath as Gates and Ballmer. There were probably quite a few folks that said to themselves, who is this guy? I’ve been here a decade….etc.
Then of course Robert left Redmond and some folks foolishly asked, “What will Microsoft do?” I think Microsoft is doing just fine. Along the same lines, does anybody remember Cooper/Katz? (if you do, you somewhat date yourself in the PR blogging world.)
In Scoble’s case, PodTech knew one of the things they were getting with Robert was his celebrity/followers. There is attention/publicity that comes with that, and to some degree that can be of value. You could compare this to pro sports before free agency. Often the star player would remain with one team for their entire careers, today that’s a rarity. In the gadget blogging world the editors/writers seem to change teams quite a bit.
It will be interesting to see how situations like this play out in the coming years. Could you imagine a Ford press release: “Ford hires former GM Chairman Bob Lutz to launch new F-150 Fanatics blog!”
But let’s go back to my initial example, if/when that person at a small operation leaves there would be huge consequences. That person is a communication channel and that suddenly disappears. It is possible to move on, but since much of the community is built upon relationships with an individual, you can’t easily swap people out. That’s been standard operating procedure for companies though. If it’s a faceless corporation, then you can swap out the ‘faces’ as much as you want :-)
On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they’re not an individual, they’re the company’s blogger. I’ve seen it happen at conferences, “Oh hey, John….you’re X’s blogger?” They’re always introduced as John, X’s Blogger, never just John. It’s like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn’t be anybody.
What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own? Part two coming soon.
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