Why Business Blogging?

Earlier today in my reader, the feed for recent popular Delicious bookmarks brought me here. Everything in it was spot-on. I keep forgetting that I’ve lived for so long in this particular world that when a dinosaur lumbers onto the scene, I still get shocked.

As I was going through the comments, I found this:

I think this is a stupid idea. As a business owner having your employess blog puts them in a position of power that is unacceptable. Not only can they damage the business if they are unhappy but the blog is like a big glowing resume online identifying your best employess as targets. If you have a comment section such as this now you have customers able to swap stories with one another about any disappointements they have had or suggestions of other competitors that they prefer.

This guy sure projected all of his insecurities into that comment! I left my own comment in response to this one (and not, unfortunately, about the post itself, which I liked very much, but that’s my little mistake). I liked the comment enough to copy it out and make a post with it here. There is one small grammatical error where I forgot an article, which I have corrected. So here it is:

I just have to do this regarding Doug’s amazingly reality-ignorant comment above:

I think this is a stupid idea. As a business owner having your employess blog puts them in a position of power that is unacceptable.

As a business, owner, having your employees blog makes everyone a marketer, everyone a salesperson. You really only have one asset, and that’s your people. If your employees don’t have any power, then neither do you or your company. Everything you do is simply an exercise in mediocrity, a slow heat-death.

Not only can they damage the business if they are unhappy but the blog is like a big glowing resume online identifying your best employess as targets.

Exactly. So don’t be an asshat. Pay them well. Treat them with respect. Give them the power to do their jobs and reward risk-taking (not necessarily success). If your best employees want to leave, what does that say about you? You think preventing them from blogging is going to fix that? It’s not even going to hide it very well!

If you have a comment section such as this now you have customers able to swap stories with one another about any disappointements they have had or suggestions of other competitors that they prefer.

First, nothing could hardly be better for your service image than a openly solved problem and a customer whose issue has been resolved out in the open. Every service problem is a golden opportunity to impress. Nobody cares when things go right because it’s expected. What matters is what you do when things don’t go right.

Second, as far as competition is concerned: you couldn’t pay enough money to get that kind of intelligence out of [a] focus group or a survey. You’re saying you want to remain ignorant of your company’s shortcomings? Good luck! By the way, customers have always been able to swap stories with each other via email, forums, telephone, and word-of-mouth. And guess what? Except for forums, you can’t respond to it or even know about it. Exactly what is the benefit of that? At least on your own blog you can take advantage of the opportunity to respond to your customers.