One of the scariest aspects of starting a company blog can be the lack of control over the final message. Even at companies where a blogger’s entries are edited before they’re posted, the resulting presentation is much more informal than the communication most companies have with the public. This informality is what makes the medium so appealing to readers, so don’t succumb to the conservative voice in your head that’s thinking, “Well, I’ll just run these posts through a blogging committee with a representative from sales, legal, and marketing before I put them online.” Nothing kills the spontaneity and genuine feel of a blog faster than giving editing power to a committee.
Use a light hand when editing comments on your blog. Edit for factual accuracy, spelling, and style consistency, but leave in the color that gives your blogger a unique voice and that conveys his or her enthusiasm. Having concerns about propriety of the content is natural, so work with your blogger to establish a set of guidelines for what kinds of material are acceptable for the blog. Take care, also, in choosing your blogger in the first place. If you can’t trust the person writing the blog, there’s little point in creating it in the first place.
Some companies have even posted their policies online to make it clear to the public that the blogger is speaking on behalf of the company but is not its spokesperson. The home page of Robert Scoble’s blog for example, makes clear he is expressing personal, not Microsoft opinions, with a little legal-speak thrown in for good measure: “Robert Scoble works at Microsoft (title: technical evangelist). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.”
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