How to start your (internal) corporate blog
Despite your company’s success in the last months you still feel an “incomplete” businessman, because you don’t have a corporate blog yet. Don’t worry, though: I’ll teach you how you can get this thing done without an headache or a computer degree.
Why do you need a corporate (internal) blog? Because you perfectly know that a blog can help your company’s growth and improve inner and outer connections between your employees, both in small or big companies. If you do it in the right way, it can make an important difference.
Bear with me this five simple steps you need to follow to start your corporate blog. We are talking about an internal blog, something that it’s accessible only within your company’s boundaries. We’ll see in another article how to start an external corporate blog.
1) Start small but think big. Of course, you aren’t experienced with blogging. It’s better to start with a technical solution that will not be an impediment later on. I suggest you to try Wordpress or Movable Type: they’re very good, customizable, and full of additional plugins. I prefer wordpress, like problogger does.
Ask your technical guys to install one instance of the platform you’ve chosen (or do it by yourself, if you’re not scared), and then PLAY with it in perfect isolation. You need to be aware of its potential and its limits, before even thinking of delegating it to someone else. Don’t start a personal blog now: you would need time that you don’t have at this moment.
After a couple of days, you feel you’re really into it. Ready to move to step 2!
2) A test bed. Call some of your employees or co-workers, and tell them you want to launch a corporate blog. Be prepared to say WHY you want it: to improve employee participation, foster free discussion of issues, create a sense of community, have a better communication between different layers of your organization… and so on.
Ask to play with it a little (like YOU did), and warn them that you’ll run a little survey by the end of the week. This way, you’re sure they’ll try it.
By the end of the week, throw in that survey in a calm moment, and be sure to understand what they like, and what they don’t. Forward it to your tech department (or yourself, if you’re enjoying working under the hood), and fix the blog with their advices.
3) Corporate blog contest: win free tickets for the stadium. Good chances that you live in a city in which people go to stadiums. Buy some tickets for a match, and then announce the birth of your corporate blog AND your first contest: every employee will have a secret account, and must post without revealing his/her identity: in a week, the nicest post will be rewarded with two tickets; next week, the same again. At the end of the third week, the best “blogger” will receive a special reward, and all identities will be revealed. It’s sort of a game that helps you encouraging your employees in using it. Once they’ve posted a couple of times, they’ll never stop.
Forcing your company to blog is not wise, and can lead to downside effects.
You can also avoid the secrecy if it doesn’t fit well with your organization, but always include some form of rewards.
4) Set the rules… with them! Now your corporate blog is up and running, but you still don’t know what is allowed, and what not. Let THEM decide, with your supervision! Once rules are set, they’ll be aware of them because they created them!
5) Create a second, for-fun, internal corporate blog. During the military service in 1999, I was a programmer at the Ministry of Aerial Defense in Rome, Italy, and we had two mailing lists: one for serious things, which we called “Gimondo” after a geeky Colonel, and one for fun, called “Dafastidio” after the motto of a very funny Marshal. This way we were able to mentally separate work from fun, and it helped supporting the success and growth of both lists.
The “serious” blog will be a tremendous tool to increase communication and productivity, while the “funny” blog will foster the sense of being a community.
I hope you enjoyed my short list. Please share with me your stories! Feel free to email me for anything related to this article. Thank you!
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