That said, you’ve been very patient, and I understand the scale issue you face. Good luck.

To be honest with you, this conversation has been difficult for us to have because there are 200 bloggers picking apart every word we say for hidden meaning.

By “in charge of blogging” just refers to wherever blogging has landed in a company. Sometimes totally decentralized, sometimes deep in the PR department, sometimes with the CEO. There isn’t any one right answer. Letting companies compare notes and learn from each other about concepts just like this why we created our group.

We’re not blogging because (despite rumors to the contrary) the Blog Council isn’t an industry organization out to push an official position. As a group, we have no positions or opinions. On the other hand, our members have hundreds of blogs and should be the voices who participate and share. What they have to say is important, we’re the back office support.

What you’ve learned about no dedicated teams “in charge” of blogging should have influenced your council methodology. Centralization of message and blogging authority runs diametrically counter to what has made blogging a successful method of communication and “marketing”.

The success of corporate blogs has everything to do with blogging as a side project, not as a full-time, centralized department. The interesting reading comes from topics around daily work on the company’s products, e.g. Steve Chan blogs about E-Business Suite technology, which is his day job. He uses his blog as a broadcast and feedback collecting mechanism. No day job, no content, unless he asks someone for it, and that makes him a mouthpiece, which comes out in his blogging.

What you’ve set out to do makes sense, but the scale issues involved have turned it into something else. Also, why won’t the Blog Council blog? Do you have IP concerns? Seems odd that you won’t use your council to seed demand and lure in people watching your progress.

Anyway, I plan to watch and comment, in typical blogger fashion. Good luck and feel free to respond.

As you can imagine, we’ve been a wee bit flooded with good thoughts and questions, responding as fast as we can. Thanks for your patience.

These are all great questions, and I’m happy to answer:

* Basically, the entire blog team (however it is loosely defined at each company) is welcome. They can come from anywhere throughout the company and are not limited to any particular department or office. The question of who at a company should blog is one of those big questions we are exploring.

* The people who have been joining the Blog Council are the departments or teams in charge of blogging at the company. We use “executives” as a generic term for “employees”. We should probably just say “whoever is involved in your blog projects” at any level.

We’ve actually learned something about the makeup of corporate blog teams during the course of our outreach efforts. Most companies (even the large ones who have been doing this a while) don’t have full teams of people in charge of blogging. Notable exceptions exist, but it’s not the norm. Part of our mission is to help build internal support for increased budgets and more resources so that extensive blog teams *can* become the norm.

* The purpose of the Council is pretty simple — to provide a forum for the people involved with corporate blogs at large companies to meet, share tactics and advice, and develop best practices together. It’s the modern incarnation of what we all used to call SIGs and User Groups.

* This is a pretty good value considering that you get weekly teleconferences, research, live events, etc, for an entire year for an entire company. You could spend $10K just sending one team to one trade show. A lot more long term value here.

Feel free to e-mail/call/etc me if you or anyone else has more questions. (312-932-9000) We’re always happy to answer more questions.

Thanks,

Andy Sernovitz
Blog Council

@Floyd: Yeah, when I hear “ROI” and “messaging” I know it’s a death sentence for my style and content. Let’s be honest, I have issues staying on message.

When corporations and councils begin to put constraints or boundaries on the blogging of individuals, many of those ideas from the wild will never see the light of day…and we’ll all be the poorer for it.

Your point about readers is huge. I had an interesting lunch with Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read/Write Web yesterday, and his consulting work around blogs centers around readership first, in the first and second person. So, as the potential blogger, I should first and foremost read, and get to know, you, the intended reader.

The slightly smaller (or greater?) cynic in me tells me its just a bunch of money grabbing high flyers trying to cash in on the movement, and grab big bucks from the corporations that can afford it, with an area where the returns are intangible so the corporations would never know if they benefited or not, but should be “seen” to be participating.

Great business plan but now it’s taken

I also note in the mission statement you referenced in the previous post, there isn’t even a mention of the readers; did they forget something?

CM.