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This is the second in a series of three posts about public sector blogging. This time I’ll deal with a few of the things to think about before you start.
1. Who will have delegated authority to post?
This is an absolutely critical issue. As I mentioned in my previous blog the benefits of blogging, in large part, arise because of its timeliness, responsiveness, openness and informality. In general blogs are by definition individual communications rather than organizational communications. This doesn’t always hold, and certainly doesn’t need to hold for “project news” style blogs where the purpose of the blog is to keep your community up to date with the latest news and information and not necessarily build a personal following or rapport between the blogger and their audience. But the key issue of delegation still stands. There is little point asking someone to be the corporate blogger and then expecting them to go through fifteen layers of the organisation for signoff on content. That defeats the purpose and nature of blogging. You need to trust your bloggers! Your organisation should be prepared to accept that the type of content that is expected for a blog is not the type of content that necessarily goes through a formal clearance process.
Of course this doesn’t mean handing over proverbial keys to the car and saying “go for it” without any guidance or training, but it does require minimising the layers of bureaucracy. A good decision support framework for working out who should blog then supporting them in their blogging endeavours may be found in your media training processes. If you are happy enough to let someone stand up in front of a camera (after training) and represent your organisation, then why not let them go online (after training) and do the same. The trick is to work up a set of commonsense guidelines for posts that will protect the individual and the organisation without switching off the creative juices of your blogger.
2. Writing Style and Skills
Blogs require a relaxed and fairly informal writing style. Although specialist blogs can deal with highly technical content, the style remains “conversational” rather than “authoritative” – in the manner of a scientific journal, or “formal” – in the manner of an internal memo, or worst of all “spin” – if your blog reads like a piece of corporate “spin” your readers internal “BS” detectors will start flashing and they will be turned off pretty quickly.
Just because someone can craft a beautifully written media release, replete with key messages, that does not mean they can write a blog. A corporate blog requires a personal touch; an empathetic hand if you will; the ability to remain “on-message” without slipping into “corporate speak”.
All of this means that blogging requires talented writers. You can’t have a good blog without a good writer, with knowledgeable opinions and information. For corporate blogs the writer needs to be a good coordinator and networker through the organisation. They need to be in a position to gather information quickly from across the organisation, interpret that content in plain English, make sure their interpretation is factually correct, and weave it into a story for the blog reader.
3. Content
You need to think a little about content boundaries; what it is okay to blog about and what is off limits? It very much depends on the nature of the project or day to day work that your blogger is dealing with. In a “project” scenario, where the blog is being used as a community engagement channel, we suggest that you blog about a whole range of things:
- General project updates – a weekly digest of events; what happened this week, what’s happening next week, are things generally on track;
- Upcoming events such as community meetings – the blog can be used to pre-inform your community about the meeting methodology and objectives;
- Day to day events that are likely to directly impact your communities amenity – road blocks, noisy activities etc;
- Hot issues about the project that are coming up in the media, through your online forum, telephone hotline, face-to-face meetings etc – address these issues early and as often as you need to. The blog is a great way to correct factually incorrect information that has been distributed via the mainstream media.
You should update your blog regularly so that your community gets used to fact that it is the best place to go for the most up to date information about the project. If it is a short term project, it is okay to write a short post every day. If it is a longer term project you might want to start with regular updates and then ease off to provide critical information and a weekly general update.
4. Commenting from the Public
The decision whether to allow your community to comment on your blog is worth considering in the context of your overall community engagement philosophy and methodology. Is your project at the “inform” end of the IAP2 Spectrum? Or is it further to the right… consult, involve, collaborate, empower. When you provide an opportunity for the community to comment on your blog you are creating a conversation space rather than an information portal. This can be wonderfully powerful as an engagement tool, but it also sends a message that there is “room to move” on the project scope or detail. You need to be sure that that flexibility really does exist. Can you alter or adjust your plans in response to community feedback? If you can, great, turn on the comment function. If you can’t, it might be more honest to use an email feedback form to engage privately with people who want to make submissions or ask you questions. On reviewing these issues and questions, if you think they are likely to be of interest to your broader community, you can always blog about them to share the question and the answer.
Another issue to consider before turning on the comment function is moderation. Do you want to moderate at all? I would strongly recommend that you do. Do you want to moderate before comments go live or are you happy to moderate after comments have gone live providing there is a regular review system in place? We use the later system on our forums and it works well. People are generally very polite and constructive – possibly because they know it is an independently moderated forum. Personally I find forums that moderate prior to allowing the comment to be posted immensely frustrating. I have tried to use a couple and after my first post disappeared into the ether and I received a message telling me that it would take at least a couple of hours to be reviewed before it would be approved for posting, I never went back. I suspect I am not that unusual in wanting my opinion to be expressed and noted in real time.
This work by Bang the Table Pty Ltd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.
Excellent posting Crispin – provides some great food for thought.
I’ve recently been impressed by our Premier here in South Australia who has become a regular Twitter user (micro-blogging, so same concept) and have been impressed that it seems he has the free reign to instantly post updates.
I like your point that if someone can stand in front of a camera after training, then why not write on a blog after training.
Must go and activate comments on my blog now! I certainly don’t like to think of myself as being just at the inform end of the spectrum!