Be honest – what do you think of when someone says Chief Blogging Officer? If you’re anything like me, it conjures images of dot com era title silliness and vague associations of our generation’s Tulip mania. You don’t have to look far for those who are only too willing to pounce on the slightest hint of bloggers’ grand ambitions (delusions of grandeur?).
But if one can get beyond the predjudices for blogging – both pro and con – I think it’s clear that the right people (the necessary skillset is relatively unique) can have a substantial impact on public perceptions of a business, and thus on the business itself. I was struck by this while reading Om Malik’s piece on how Yahoo is getting its Mojo back. Here’s the relevant bit:
And what it also has a couple of guys, I like to call them blog evangelists, who knowingly or not, have brought the right kind of attention to the company. Russell Beattie who recently joined Yahoo has been blogging furiously (much to my annoyance) about Yahoo and its wireless efforts. In normal course of events, Yahoo would have issued a press release, and many of us would have paid little or no attention. Jeremy Zawodny is the other and has helped the company focus on some of the newer social media trends. I have never met him, but if his blog is anything to go by, then perhaps he is spreading the open media religion at Yahoo. The blog-evangelists unlike press relations folks, only write when there is something important to say.
I cite this because I agree with it, and because to me it’s one of the most important things Yahoo has done. I don’t necessarily attach as much importance to Beattie, but I’m not as bullish on the mobile handset as a platform so much of his value add is lost on me. Zawodny, however, has almost singlehandedly gotten Yahoo back on my radar.
Yahoo, however, certainly has no monopoly on the practice and having a blogger as one of the high profile (at least for certain audiences) faces to an enterprise is becoming more and more common place. Microsoft’s Scoble, one of the higher profile bloggers out there, has been credited in many quarters as being a major factor in the subtle softening of anti-Microsoft sentiment. Many of the major firms have these types, here are few (apologies to those I leave off the list): Ed Brill (IBM/Lotus), Joe Beda (Google), Miguel de Icaza (Novell), Tim Bray (Sun). Each of these people has changed the way I look at their organizations, and that’s more than any press release can say.
The next obvious question is, is there room for more people like these? Absolutely. There are volumes of divisions or product lines just in the above firms, not to mention the millions of firms not on the list, that could benefit from a person dedicated to the role of customer evangelist/blogger. The overhead from an enterprise perspective is low, but the returns can be dramatic. The skeptic might say, “Great, but technical minds like Bray or de Icaza don’t exactly grow on trees,” and that’s very true. But the interesting thing is that that sort of mind is not required for this role – it’s helpful, but not mandatory. The commonality between all of these folks, in my opinion, is not their technical acumen but their authenticity. They’re not marketers pushing products they don’t believe in, they’re the type that calls a spade a spade.
Authenticity as a determining factor in success may seem like an oversimplification, but just compare their subscription numbers with marketing feeds or the like. Either way, I encourage our clients regularly to get blogging, and it might be something for you to consider as well. But choose your voice wisely, for just as the right blogger can have an outsized impact on your public perception, so too can the wrong blogger give you a bad name. The good news is that good bloggers should be easy to identify: just read his or her current blog.
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