Personal vs. Corporate Blogging

The acceptance of blogging is slowing but surely starting to catch on where I work. It will be interesting to see if the seed I planted will grow into something that is used company wide. I hope so because I still feel like I’m in a vacuum and don’t have a great way of tapping into the interesting things that everyone is doing. There is always the same caveat: that is in order for any of this to work both development and management have to be engaged and be willing to take the time to blog. I will say that, within the team that I work, the use of WordPress as our blogging platform has been a huge success but brings up a new issue which is where does one draw the line between personal and corporate blogging? The following attempts to explain.

Personal Blogging

What you blog about is up to you. In my case, I tend to keep it semi-professional and password protect content that isn’t appropriate for the general audience. Just browse this site if you need examples. I do, however, believe that most content should be owned by the individual and not the company as long as it is not specific to the company you work for or have worked for. This is important because these are individual experiences and should be associated with you. I also believe that it is good for the company to allow individuals to blog independently of the company because it empowers the individual to continue blogging as well as reach a wider audience. The hope is that as your network of connections grows, so will you and so will the company. Finally, it also reduces the amount of redundancy on the individual as he/she can capture content in one place.

Corporate Blogging

Now, with the above in mind, I will admit that there is still a need for a company to maintain a corporate blog and have its employees contribute to it whether it be per team, per project, etc. This might sound like duplicate work for the individual but it is not. The reason is that there is quite a bit of content that is specific to the company and most definitely cannot be displayed in a public manner. For example, consider the following:

• Schedules - Calendar and time line based information that captures goals, due dates, milestones, etc.
• News and Information - Information that is not time sensitive, unlike e-mail or instant chat, but should be available for those interested.
• Daily/Weekly Work Activities - Information related to work performed on a daily or weekly basis by the team members. This is good for the employee because it is a way to remember what took place and for management to keep tabs on progress. An added benefit might be that fewer meetings take place because everyone is “tuned” in.
• Meeting Notes - Meeting related information such as who attended the meeting, action items, etc. for those instances when a meeting can not be avoided.
• Out of Office Notifications - Information related to when team members are out of the office or on vacation.
• Documentation - Useful materials related to the how the company works, team works, etc.

These are only a few examples between and will vary depending on the situation.

In summary, enjoy what you do and take a little time to write about it. It should be possible to keep work and play separate without undo strain on you, the writer. Lastly, do not forget to be aware of basic blogging guidelines.

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