I had to catch my plane at 3:45 yesterday in San Francisco, so I couldn’t stay for the post-conference workshop, but I did get some good reading material for the ride home, Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book. A signed copy, no less.
I got through the first seven chapters on the plane. It’s a good overview of blogging from the corporate perspective, and what it has to offer both from an external marketing perspective and also for internal/employee communications.
Here’s a link to Debbie’s blog, where she has links to some other reviews, and where you can download and read Chapter 1 right now.
I think Chapter 7, “Top Ten Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog” is the highlight…but then, I haven’t read the last three chapters or the 40 pages of Bonus Resources. Not surprisingly, one of the top ten tips is “Package what your write (ten Tips, five Rules, seven Ways.)” Here are the other nine:
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Choose the right topic (be sure it’s specific)
Find your voice
Invite a conversation
Always, always link
Write for Web readers
Write for Google searchers
Publish consistently
Take risks
Have fun
I’m looking forward to reading the rest, and maybe I’ll have a full overview then.
Technorati: Corporate Blogging, Blog, Debbie Weil
The biggest challenge in corporate blogging, from a healthcare point of view, seems to be the approval process. We are looking at starting an OB blog (multiple contributors)at the hospital where I work, and I can already anticipate the objections. What if one of the people who is blogging posts something that doesn’t coincide with our corporate stance? What if somebody sues us because we gave suggestions that didn’t work?
Other published material has to go through an approval process. Should a blog? And if so, what staff member would want to leave him or herself open to such micromanagement?
Good questions. I think the contributors to your blogs should be among your OBs or mid-level practitioners…and that you should lay out some ground rules for what kinds of subject matter you will address. I wouldn’t get into direct discussion of particular patient issues, but use them as a jumping off point to discuss basic types of conditions or questions. One thing they may want to work in regularly is something like, “of course, individual cases are different, and you should talk with your physician about your particular concerns.”
Also, part of the idea is you would have other moms and moms-to-be contributing their comments, which would help build community. If you have childbirth classes, for instance, you could encourage participants to ask questions in the blog about concepts they perhaps didn’t understand, and the blog could be a good reference, where those teaching your classes could put some of their class notes on the blog, and participants could discuss. It could be a good way of finding out whether people were really understanding the course material.
I would welcome other thoughts on this…and will give some thought to a new post on the subject, where we could discuss in more detail.
Does Mayo Clinic have a corporate blog? And, on that same note, do you know of other hospitals or healthcare organizations who have tried something similar? Soon, I will be putting a proposal for this OB blog together, and it would help if I could show examples of organizations that have had some success with this.
Hi Beth – Mayo Clinic does not have a corporate blog. It is something we will be considering. I don’t have examples of health care providers or hospitals with blogs, but I’m going to do some checking.