Part of respecting the conversation you’re about to begin having with your customers (or contributors or owners) is to participate with a purpose. The number of companies who simply hop into blogging and post whatever they want scares me.

One particular client of mine seemed like a dream opportunity. The company was willing to try new things, totally into the possibilities of blogging, and seemed to have that most elusive of traits they really “got” blogging. However, after several months of working closely with the team, the company ended up doing its own thing and doing it very badly indeed. Originally, they launched their blog with the advice my associates and I had given them: they provided a “weird and wacky news from around the Web” kind of blog, largely because that’s how they marketed themselves “virally,” via word of mouth. A week later, they changed the blog to a pornographic blog, arguing that the traffic would be higher. The final week, it degraded even further into a tangled mess.

Obviously, I don’t feel comfortable naming this client, both for their sake and because it won’t benefit the point of this story. The point is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t know where you’re going, and don’t have a real strategy in place for getting there, you’re more likely to flounder around making a fool of yourself than actually getting any real returns from blogging. As you begin looking at blogging, you need to start thinking of your blog in a strategic way. Do you have a public relations goal? If so, you need blog relationships. Do you have media tracking? If so, you need blog tracking. Do you have a business plan? If so you need a blog plan. Everything you do on your blog needs to have a reason, and you need to use metrics and measures for success. If you have no goals, then you can’t determine whether you are succeeding in your blog or not.

CRAFTING A STRATEGY

Any successful blogging strategy includes a number of important considerations, and yours may have more or less of the following:

• Reasons for starting This includes your values, vision, objectives, goals, and motivating factors (such as competitors, market pressures, or parent company directives). Knowing how the blogging idea came up in the first place is important, because while it may have been the original motivating factor, that doesn’t mean it’s the best one you need to have in going forward.

• Ways to determine success What ideas are being proposed? What drivers can be evaluated and turned into metrics? Who do you need to relate to (the media, your partners, your contractors, your suppliers, or your customers)? How often will your success be measured? Ultimately, you need to know what blogs are being written, for what reason, and how you can ascertain their individual and collective levels of success.

• Ownership and accountability Who is in charge of your various blogs, and to whom do they report? Do the blogs serve purely a marketing function, will they fall under IT (as many website activities do), or will they be addressed at the senior management level? Accountability is even more important than who will run your blogs, as accountability determines the long-term success of your blogs. Even if you have the right team running your blogs, if the wrong person is dealing with issues that come up, the blogs may be unsuccessful. Many other considerations lead to a successful blogging strategy, but once you identify what you’re trying to accomplish, how you’ll get there, and how you’ll know when you get there as well as figuring out who will write which blogs you’re off to a good start.

Beyond creating your initial strategy, you also need to create a strategy for each blog. I’ve talked about GM’s blogging several times in this article. GM has allowed each blog to take on an identity, and individuals and teams grow that identity through means other than blogs, such as via podcasts, video, and other consumerdriven media. Perhaps the goals for one of your blogs would be best served by adding a message board system, or maybe you want to invite some of your readers to contribute from time to time. Maybe you annually fly out a dozen of your most active commenters for a day of brainstorming. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you let each blog stand on its own and grow on its own. You will generate good ideas for not only one of your blogs, but for all of them.

THE ELEVATOR PITCH FOR BLOGGING

In April 2004, the Social Software Weblog (http://socialsoftware .weblogsinc.com) hosted a contest to see who could write the “perfect corporate weblog elevator pitch,” as judged by a panel of experts. The pitch would convince the executive “to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way.” Following the illustration is the winning pitch, written by Lee LeFever of Common Craft (www.commoncraft.com).

First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value it provides is context the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making. With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial world. Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news sources?

Weblogs serve this need. By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news, providing context to the company context that can profoundly affect decision making. In this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through increasing their awareness of internal news and events.