Scott Anderson, Director of Enterprise Brand Communications for HP, gave the opening keynote this morning at Syndicate, "the premier event for content syndication trends," and he had some interesting things to say on behalf of a massive corporation that's embraced blogging wholeheartedly. From one of Scott's first slides:
- A corporation cannot dialog
- A corporation is a collection of people
- People dialog with people
Scott commented further:
HP isn’t blogging with anybody; people within HP are blogging...
Doc Searls is the conference chair and introduced Scott, so the parallels with the first three theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto are surely no accident:
- Markets are conversations.
- Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
- Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Old news: Doc and his fellow Cluetrain co-conspirators have won. Their fundamental message is now the conventional wisdom among big-brand corporate marketers. More from Scott proving this point (I'm paraphrasing here):
- No flacks. All HP blogs are written by the person whose name is at the top of the page, not ghostwritten by PR staffers.
- No lawyers. HP's legal team initially wanted to vet all posts. Scott recognized that this would have killed their blog experiment in its infancy and fought hard to resist it. As an apparent compromise, HP has established blogging guidelines (see below) that allow bloggers to be themselves (within limits) while keeping their attorneys at bay.
- No censorship. HP learned a tough lesson early on when an overzealous staffer deleted a negative comment from the blog of David Gee, a senior marketing exec. The incident threatened to give HP a black eye in the blogosphere, but they restored the comment, Gee rapidly posted a response, "Honesty is the best policy," and they now realize that negative comments are the most important ones.
Despite HP's commitment to openness, their employee's company blogs aren't personal platforms. The company has established some clear, common sense guidelines, excerpted below, to help bloggers find the right balance:
- Speak for yourself. ("Write your own blog in your own distinct voice.")
- Target timely topics. ("...relevant to the business technology and business issues and concerns of our customers.")
- Keep the communication lines open. ("...unfiltered two-way communication.")
- Always show respect. ("Respect the blog medium.")
- Preserve privacy and confidentiality. ("Reflect common sense and good business judgment.")
After a year of active blogging, HP views it as a success. According to Scott, readership and press coverage are up, a number of productive discussions have been sparked by blog posts, and customers are responding favorably.
Rich Marcello, General Manager of HP's Business Critical Systems, has said:
A customer stated "how much he liked my blog and that it was just as important to him that he knew who he was buying from and what that person believed as it was to understand the products.”
Rich also recently posted a one-year assessment of his HP blog:
Well, I've been writing this blog now for about a year. The other day I was thinking about what I was trying to accomplish when I started last December and whether or not I actually did what I set out to do. I think I have. In a nutshell, I wanted to show you a little bit more about who I am as a person and what I really believe on many different topics. No hype, just a really direct and honest conversation on a host of topics. Hopefully, you've felt some of that in the writing and sometimes, at least, found some of the topics helpful. For me personally, it's been really useful to write down as honestly and crisply as possible what I believe.
Then I came across a really good discussion of two different kinds of leaders written by Sobonfue Somé. I thought the description of the first kind of leader is how I've tried to act in this blog (and actually in my entire life) and so I thought I would share it with you here:
"You could say there are two different kinds of leaders: the leader who strives to be herself and retain her genuine identity while helping those who follow her, bringing along her goodness and failures and exhibiting both; and the leader who figures out and imitates the model that people want to see, showing her good qualities and hiding her flaws, 'having it all together' and so forth. The first kind many people find frightening, partly, I think, because it suggests no one can reach perfection. The second kind of leader is more appealing to our view of the world. But the second path is a deception from the beginning. As a human being, it's hard to be flawless, isn't it?”
tags: syndicate syndicate conference doc searls
