How to convince your boss to let you start a corporate blog

Amazingly, I'm still hearing from many people that the geniuses who run their companies forbid employees to blog and prohibit posting in online chat rooms.

I think that these misguided executives simply don’t understand new social media tools and therefore in their confusion and fear, they just ban participation.

Many employees lament to me that they know the policy is a bad one. They want to participate in social media. But they can’t because they risk being fired.

The most common reason given for the company position? "Fear of revealing company secrets." Yikes. That was the same excuse given 15 years ago for supplying computers and email addresses only to people of director level and above.

People want to know, how do I convince management to let me blog?

The most important thing is to take it in steps.

Here's a plan that I would suggest you implement with the leaders of you company:

1) Monitor what millions of people are saying about you, the market you sell into, your organization, and its products. Read important blogs. forums and chat rooms. Bring any interesting tidbits to the attention of your bosses. Do it in writing.

2) Stick your toe into the water by getting approval to place a specific comment on a particular forum entry or blog post. Get the agreement in writing and show the link that you created to your bosses.

3) If this goes well, see if you can get approval to comment as a full participant in conversations on other people's blogs without gaining approval on each one.

4) After a few months, share evidence with your bosses that you have helped shape conversations and see if they'd be willing to let you create a mockup (password protected) blog of your own.

5) After a few months of trial password protected posts, show your bosses that you aren't giving away secrets and perhaps you will become a celebrity by being the first person in your company to be allowed to blog.

6) Become a thought leader in your marketplace through your own blog.

Where people end up hitting brick walls with management is starting with step 6. That's too big a leap for people whose closest encounters with blogs are reading about them in BusinessWeek Magazine.

And if you're successful with this strategy, let me know so I can blog about you!

Comments

[Steven]

You outline an excellent plan. But you make a big assumption. That the people you hear from should be the one to represent the company. Not always the case.

[jaded]

Good ideas. I have been working on convincing my boss to start a blog for weeks....basically I used the all of our competitors are doing it and the idea of increasing our search engine rankings as 'proof points.' Its coming soon on our next website revision. But for now, I'll just keep up with my own blog. :)

[Brad Shorr]

Great advice. Another way companies can get their feet wet with blogs is to use them internally to manage projects. A blog can serve as an efficient internal communication system for things such as software searches and implementations, internal sales contest reporting and promotion, company news, etc. Using an internal approach, company leadership will be able to see blogs at work and even blog themselves. Familiarity might make management more comfortable in reaching out to an external audience.

[RachelC]

I great set of steps for an individual that can also be used if it is a more 'official' project. I'm also doing what Brand suggested and using the tools internally to help educate those who are trying to understand what is going on.

But Steven raises a key issue - who should be the face(s) of the company. Personally, I'm all for opening it at all levels. If you trust your employees to open their mouth outside of work, then you trust them to blog. But you have to educate them on some of the perils of doing so and what they can and cannot say.

[Chat]

Thank You !