Blogging4Business - corporate blogging

Panel about the do's and don'ts of corporate blogging. Struan Robertson - tech lawyer at Pinsett Masons. "Lawyers can give you plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea - here are some of them

• the risk of defamatory material being posted. "best blogs are a little bit edgy"
• negative comments - referenced the mini-microsoft blog "does bill gates or other shareholders want to be reading negative comments - what does it do the share value"
• lots of other stuff

all of which is applicable to almost any kind of communication. Referenced outlaw.com their technology law website - positive impact - demonstrates tech law credibility, makes them seem more approachable, and has generated business. Phillipe Borremans - IBM Blogging internally for 4 years, over 5,000 internal blogs, proactively asking e'ees to blog. Have internal blogging platform - any e'ee can "and should" blog. Blogs, wikis, podcasts are treated as a set of tools that co-exist with other tools (like Notes teamroom). Guidlines are important - talks about the process for creating the IBM blog guidelines. Bloggers wrote the guidelines - these guidelines were posted on a wiki and comments/changes invited. Then handed over to legal. "If you don't have guidelines, don't blog." Don't impose the guidelines - they should be created by the blogging community and then given to lawyers". Blogging depends on a culture of openness. Need to educate, it's not as easy as it is perceived to be - especially internally. Genie Lutz -Partner @ PWC PWC started blogging internally 18 months ago, and 8 months ago externally. 16,000 e'ees in UK - 10% per annum e'ee turnover. Have a number of external blogs. "We sell intellectual property" - the purpose ofthe blogs is to personalise the information. Surprised about the level of readership they've got, and the level of commentary the external market is providing - real sense of dialogue with the market. They are a regulated business - which constrains what they can do/say. Terms and Conditions on everything - FSA have guidelines on what can be said on websites. Philippe Borremans sums it up - "It's about trusting your people and showing common sense..." Technorati Tags: blogging4business