Ensight – Jeremy Wright

As I’ve been thinking about where blogging fits into the corporate communication space, I’ve realized that the challenge is that fundamentally it doesn’t.

Corporate communication is a box. It is predefined:

- Who can say things
- What they can say
- Who they can say it to
- When they can say it
- Where they can say it
- Why things are said

There are a few notable exceptions, but they are typically done through “peepholes” where people can only see a select amount of what is going on. Interviews, press releases, press conferences, case studies…

The challenge with blogging is that none of these rules apply. Whenever you allow or encourage individual employees to blog, all of these rules, which typically box corporate communication in, simply no longer apply. Whether it is internally or externally, simply having a blogging platform allows anyone to say anything to anyone who is technically able to listen anytime about whatever they want.

As long as we try and evangelize blogging from a typical corporate communications structure, we’ll run into resistance – which can be summed up in either one word or two words. One word: fear. Two words: corporate culture. Often these are interchangeable.

Thankfully, there are other ways you can approach blogging. Since blogging is a tool, you can talk about it in a myriad of ways. You can emphasize different aspects so that you talk the right “language” to the right people. This is the largest challenge, in my mind, of effective blog consulting. Talking the right language.

And it’s something I know all of us are still trying to learn.