Reader Input: Should Corporations Have a Chief Blogger?

Business and Blogging: A reader recently sent me this article, Virtual reality: Chief blogger title catching on with corporations, from Financial Week. The reader stated that he thought I’d be interested in it.
The article is a discussion of the recent move that several large corporations, such as Kodak, have made to create a chief blogger position.
The new job title echoes a post that I wrote over a month ago on The New Web 2.0 Careers. (While I didn’t specifically mention the chief blogger job title, I did point out that companies are likely to start hiring somebody to manage their online communities.)
Personally, I think the trend towards corporations having a dedicated person to handle their social media marketing needs is prudent one. Web 2.0 is a growing force in today’s marketplace and those companies that don’t embrace it will be left behind.
The Financial Week article rightly points out that the focus for such a job should be inclusive of all social media and not just blogging. The article also mentions a drawback of such a position - the chief blogger can become a lightning rod for controversy. It rightly points out that, in a corporate environment, managing social media can be a full-time job.
The chief blogger position, or whatever a corporation wishes to call it, is a natural extension of an organization’s marketing or public relations department.
In terms of the job putting the chief blogger in the position of a lightning rod during controversy,…

How Tight Is Your Blog’s Community?

Business and Blogging:
Here at Business and Blogging we’ve emphasized the importance of building relationships again and again.
Recently, a real life case study unfolded which demonstrated the importance of community in a dramatic way.
CNN.com recently covered the story of James Karl Buck, a graduate student who used the micro-blogging tool, Twitter, to help secure his release from an Egyptian jail earlier this month.
After the story broke, the blogosphere was abuzz with the news. Many blogs covered the story including:

Legal Blog Watch
Search Engine Watch
Blog Herald
Twitter Blog

I first learned of the story, fittingly enough, through a tweet (micro blog post) left by one of my followers.
The point to all of this is that James Karl Buck’s micro blog post about his situation was effective because he had a community already in place. His community was enough in tune with his activities that they knew that his post was serious and that it meant trouble. His community cared enough about him that they responded.
Business blogger, what about you?
Is your community in place?
Are they in tune with you?
Do they care enough to respond?
The answers could change your life . . . or, at the very least, your business.
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Should Bloggers Have Limits On How They Cover Sports?

Business and Blogging:
Should bloggers have limits on how they cover sports?
Apparently, many sport organizations think so. The New York Times has posted a piece today on the Tension Over Sports Blogging.
Sports franchises are beginning to recognize blogging as a form of legitimate media. The New York Times piece includes the rules pertaining to bloggers (and other forms of media) from the following sports organizations:

National Basketball Association - Bloggers from credentialed news organizations must be admitted to locker rooms.
Major League Baseball - Limits the number of photographs, audio, and video clips to a reasonable number.
National Football League - Limits audio and video clips to 45 seconds.

According to The New York Times piece, The National Collegiate Athletic Association also has publication limits for various sports. (Personally, I couldn’t find the limitations - but I also didn’t spend a lot of time on the site.)
Here at Business and Blogging, we’ve posted about sports blogging before. In that post, we discussed the fact that many football teams have their own official blog.
The issues raised by The New York Times post are a little bit different. They don’t deal with whether or not a sports team should have a blog, but rather with the very nature of blogging itself.
Some of the questions the post raises include:

What is a blog? Is it a news source? Is it editorial in nature?
Should blogs in the U.S. be subject to first amendment protection?
Should sports organizations be…

How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

Business and Blogging: One of the questions that I’m frequently asked is: “how can we make sure that customers and potential customers are reading my company blog?”
The answer to the question is simple: blog about topics that interest your readers.
The trouble with that answer is that it really is too simple. The sad fact is that many businesses do not really know their customers, and therefore they don’t know what interests or needs their customers have.
In fact, one of our first posts here at Business and Blogging dealt with the importance of relationships. Relationships were important to building your business then, and they are still important.
Building a relationship with your customer is not too really different from building any other type of relationship. Here are some basics:

Communicate. Talk with your customer.
Listen. What is your customer trying to tell you?
Respond. Show that your customer’s concerns are your concerns.
Wait. Be patient with your customer.
Commit. Show that you are invested in your customer’s concerns.

Other resources to help you build better business relationships:

From Jason Rakowski at Learn Good Customer Service, Building Relationships In Business - Why It’s So Important
From Liz Strauss at Successful Blog, Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think
From Eric Eggertson at Common Sense PR, An Example of Why We Build Friendships and Business Relationships
From Bob MacDonald at Mac, The Secret to Business Success? Become a Trust Builder

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