Months ago, I mentioned in a blog that I had written an article for The Danish Film Institue's magazine "FILM". And now, it's out ! If you want to read it, luckily, it is also online. You can check it out here (In Danish). I would really appreciate it if you read it and gave me some feedback since it's the first time I've ever written something for an established magazine. As you probably understand, I'm super excited about it!
X
Emma

This Month's "FILM"

New STAGIS group moblog to be found at stagis.23photogroup.com

The other day I was presenting the idea of blogging for one of the larger companies in Denmark. The skilfull director of communications asked me what the value of blogging was. ”Is it like our forum”, she asked, ”where people can talk to each other?”. The difficulty of presenting a new way of working, communicating or relating is that it’s being compared to existing technologies and methods instead of being valued on it’s own terms. So I thought I'd share some of my ideas of what blogs can do and why it's difficult to manange here. Sorry if it's a lengthy post...

As blogging is a social technology as well as a way of communicating and relating it doesn’t dictate a specific use or purpose. It’s up to the owner and writer(s) of a blog to apply the meaning and style to the blog that makes sense in the given context. Hence the diverse use and endless ways of understanding weblogs and it’s possible impacts. Some of the qualities I have seen are:

1. Blogging is now Blogs are dynamic, changing and reflecting what’s going on right now. As opposed to lots of websites (I know I’m now doing the comparison to a very old-fashioned thing myself...) it doesn’t state ”Our values” as a static thing but rather introduces new thoughts, ideas and agendas as an ongoing process. A student at CBS interviewed me for a master-thesis on picture blogging and authenticity and one of the ideas is that the perceived authenticity increases dramatically if the pictures (or text) on a (picture) blog is new (meaning only a few hours old).

2. Blogging is honest and builds authentic identity
Or at least it should be. I think it would be hard to keep up an deceitful blog for a longer period of time and it would backfire tremendously so basically it’s bound to be honest. Identity is about sameness over a given period of time and blogs give readers the ability to track what has been said earlier. It gives readers a feeling of what’s the same in spite of time.

3. Blogging is personal
I’ve never seen a good blog that didn’t have some sort of personality behind it. Lots of blogs are related to work or professional practices but they are still driven by a person or group of people who put their personal voice and energy into the blog. The feeling of personality keeps readers coming back and becoming involved in the dialogue.

4. Blogging is dialogue
Unlike the types of communication tools that most companies are using blogs are based on dialogue. For several reasons this scares the living daylight out of some of the managers I talk to. One of them is that they expect to be confronted with customers or users that are not 100% satisfied. As if that is a change in itself. The change is, unsatisfied as well as happy stakeholders wil become visible for the management of the company, giving a unique possibility to build relationships and understand needs of the users/customers. This also means that blogging is not only about writing (which is only one half of the idea, value and time that should be spent on bloging). When was the last time you learned from you customers?

5. Blogging reflects change
Just like the rest of the organization the blog is changing every day, week and year. Depending on the degree of extroversy or honesty of the blog, stakeholders are able of reading some of the ups and downs of the field of work, organization or industry that the blog is reflecting. Jonathan Schwartz from Sun has been blogging a lot about his industry and the competition. That way, lots of employees at Sun are able of following the ideas of their leader.

Blogging is a leadership challenge
As one comment last week argued, blogs that are not nurtured are worthless. The technology and design of a blog is not a big challenge (at least if you know what you’re doing) but writing posts that call others to participate is. It takes involvement, a personal style of writing and ongoing care to create a successful blog. As Marta mentioned in her blog-about-blogs-post last week blogging is a genre of its own and mastering a new genre is not done in a few days or a few blog posts. It takes practice and experimentation to find and develop the personal blogging style of yours. As I mentioned in a comment the other day we have witnessed blogs that have grown to live a happy life and some that have lived a short life only to exhale and die. One of the managerial decisions that will surely kill an organizational blog is too many rules. If a blog is to be written in the ”official language” or live up to ”the communication politics” of the organization it is just not going to happen. That’s why the managerial challenge is to help the blog grow by motivating the participants (if you’re a manager and you are blogging the challenge will be self-motivation and leading your own blog-routines). That doesn’t mean you can’t have a blog-policy or that the blog is going to be out-of-control. It just means that the risk of not having purpose, time, energy and motivation is way higher than the risk of something ”dangerous” appearing on a blog. And once you’ve decided that you want a blog (for any of the reasons mentioned above) there is only one way forward: Fast implementation, experimentation and keeping it simple!

Are you open for critique like Anders Fogh?
As I’ve been mentioning before one of the ideas of getting a blog is to hear ideas as well as critique directly from your users/customers/employees/citizens.
Last week the danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen started blogging and as one of the danish newspapers commented, he seems to be open to critizism – at least in the sense that critical comments haven’t been removed from the blog which is obvious for a blogger (like myself) but still a question that I meet a lot when I talk to managers about corporate blogging. And with a reputation that lots of critics would describe as anything but open and dialogical a blog is either a move in a good direction or an attempt to create an image without changing what's behind it. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal is referring to Jeff Jarvis article on Irans president blogging already back in 2003 so it's not a new thing. Anders’ predecessor Poul Nyrup Rasmussen also blogged very early on but changed his blog into ”moments” (”øjeblikke”) and cut the amount of posts down to just telling about moments he felt like commenting on. Now he seems to be blogging full throttle again. As did a number of danish and international politicians back in the early blog-days in the nineties to express their opinions and ideas and get feedback from their stakeholders. As any good leader would do today.

Is your leader afraid of blogging?

Recently I'ev helped colleagues do research on new numbers about the blogosphere. Figures that are not so easily found, since the blogosphere is constantly evolving. In March 2007 Technorati tracked 70 mio. blogs (not nescesarily active blogs). Estimates tell, that every second 1.4 blogs open worldwide. The blogosphere is more than a 100 times bigger than in 2003. And today the estimated post frequency is 17 per second. (Click on illustration to see 'Why Blogging Matters'!)

Numbers on corporate blogging are challenging to estimate; A reason is that many corporate blogs start-off as company intern blogs that, if they have the potential, might go public later on. Those are not easily tracked. But online lists and wikis on corporate blogs are being developed at different sites. Like the one by TheNewPR/Wiki. Or like this wiki by Social Square on professional blogs in Denmark. And blogspotting is a competitive field, where different experts demonstrates different tracking skills.

In October 2004 Technorati tracked around 5000 American corporate blogs. Today around 10% of the Fortune 500 are blogging (some find the Fortune 500 list to undercount, and find TheNewPR/Wiki to be more accurate, see this article from BusinessWeek). TheNewPR/Wiki counts that by March this year 274 CEOs are blogging. But numbers tell that eg. 2.000 employees at IBM are blogging, and even 2.500 at Microsoft. So, if including the company intern blogs, the numbers must be rather sky-high.   

Balancing corporate governance of organizational blogs
My friend, who works with New Media at another agency (none mentioned, none forgotten!) and I shared a too short but really interesting conversation this week on corporate blogging: My friend telling me, that their corporate blog was launched full of good intentions. But is now slowly dying because of its, in my friend's opinion, too corporate concept; there are many restrictions on the bloggers, and personal angles on posts are not too welcome. My friend sees radical corporate demands on blogs as contrasting the very essence of what a good, living blog is. And this has been a turn-off and has taken the live and blog-engagement out of their corporate blog.  At least that’s my friend’s qualified experience.

(Click to read joke)           When introducing something new like a corporate blog, its understandable that leaders might wish to stay in control of how it evolves – but, like Nikolaj S. points out when talking about organizational blogging, since those leaders have chosen to hire their employees and provide them with a phone line and email account, trust in the employees' communication skills on behalf of the cooperation has already taken place… So personality (not to be confused with 'very personal' og private) in a blog post can be a tool of engagement; for the blogger as well as the reader and the commentator. Turn-on and tune in! – in stead of turn-off and turn out...

But the balance between personal and corporate (like that of private and public) can still be a challenging one when launching and introducing a corporate blog, at least 'till the new bloggers and management find confidence in this medium and way of communicating. And in DK, we (and Danish cooperations) are still far behind of what is a rather mainstream thing in eg. United States: Blogging.

Success parametres in corporate blogging
I find a blog-theme to be one qualified parameter of success, also since the blog is strong in narrowcasting, as well as personality, a strong sense of 'NOW' (presence and topical) and the ability to turn on engagement from the world around you through your blog, that being a social media.

Blogs have a build in element that tricks voyerism, which, if managed with considered thought and paired with authenticity, can do all good for a corporate blog – as well as for the organizational culture and public face of the cooperation, strengthening its display with a touch of personality, that many stakeholders demand of companies today - eg. future employeees, but also clients and product fans.

A blogger that really enjoys blogging is another simple but important key to launch a successful blog! So, management should also be vary not to turn-off the blog-engagement by too heavy corporate governance on the organizational blog.

The interesting thing is, that blogging, now being more constituted, is developing as its own genre – where styles, lengths on posts and purposes and perspectives on blogging are being discussed worldwide, also in blogs on blogs, meta-blogs. And the development, exploring and challenging of this new genre in communication and writing is really interesting to participate in! I mean; there are many ways to write a great poem – like there is writing a blog. And just ‘cus you are excellent in writing novels or journalism, you will not necessarily do good in writing poetry – or blog posts…Or maybe the cool thing about 2.0 blogging is, that it is really for everyone to do?! – though some talk critically about the 2.0 'pollution' of and by www, like author Andrew Keen in his recent book "The Cult of the Amateur", just reviewed by K-forum in this article: 'Al magt til amatøren?' (Power to the amateur?).

What do you think? Do you have a favorite style within blogging? What do you find to be a key to success in corporate blogs? And how corporate do you think corporate blogging can be?

No firm is!
I mean, up until this very friday, my relationship with everyone here was good and amicable. But nothing more than that. That isn't bad. Not at all. It's good mannered work-ethic.
However, after our party, it just seems that these people now are beyond colleagues for me. They're, like, grown-up friends ! And I definitely think that it shakes together a company to do something else but work together. Of course, all you smart PR-People out there already knew this. But hey, I'm just sharing my point of view here!
So, let your hair down and shake it up with the person in the cubicle next to you!
x
Emma
(Looks like the summer's coming back now, lads!) :-D

Pretty much the view from where I was standing the entire night; The bar!

The picture is taken from the Stagis Moblog where there's loads and loads of other pics from this great evening!

At 4 pm today we're inviting our clients, friends, colleagues and partners as well as You, dear blogreader, to join us for a beer or a cocktail. It was supposed to be a garden-party but the weather is not quite supporting our venture this morning so... Welcome to a couzy indoor friday afternoon and night:

I just received this email from Nilam at Leeds University Business School the other day as I attended a talk she did at the Reputation Institute Conference two weeks ago:

Dear Nikolaj,

It was good to meet you at the Reputation Institute conference recently and chat briefly about the diary studies that I am conducting with communication practitioners. I enjoyed giving the presentation, though it would be useful to know your thoughts about the methodology and initial themes that were identified.

You mentioned that you had some useful references in organisational identity and narrative analysis. Would you be able to forward these references to me at all? The diary studies and interviews will continue until the end of September, when I can begin to analyse the themes in more depth, so let me know if you want to
be kept informed as to how the research is progressing, and I look forward to hearing from you soon with your thoughts on the research.

By the way, your website is great - I really like the flow and colour.

Best wishes,

Nilam Ashra
Doctoral Researcher in Corporate Communication

...and I'm thinking maybe others than Nilam would be inspired by the discussion. Nilam is conducting research trying to understand how communication practitioners make decisions. What are the real reasons for their actions? And as you might expect the reasons behind the decisions are not always what the communication practitioners (technicians as well as advisors) actually think is right. Navigating in corporate politics, upholding self esteem, pleasing the manager and lots of other reasons tend to be just as much the reason for communication practises as is understanding of the market, the company, the strategy or own ideas about what would be "right".

At STAGIS we have done quite a few projects where we try to understand what's going on in the organizational culture, what the beliefs, processes and lived strategies are, rather than just looking at market opportunities. And our method has often been Analytical Narrative Research, meaning interviewing employees and managers in the company and co-creating what really makes sense in the company.

Here is some of the theoretical input you could start with if you're interested:

Hi Nilam!

Great to hear from you!

I was thinking of you this weekend but didn’t get very far with finding stuff for you. The main source that I’ve used and that I know many others doing qualitative studies are also referring to is Barbara Czarniawska who’s done lots of this stuff. Basically she works with narratives in organizations and in my perspective it does’nt really matter if its spoken or written language. There are several books she’s written and lots of litterature on research where shes represented. Here is one of them:

A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies (Qualitative Research Methods) (Paperback) by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges (Author)

There are also some german consultants (and academics) that I stumbled on a few years ago at AoM: Schindl Rughase Partners. I am a big fan of their ideas on driving strategy processes and the link to identity-work. They base user-studies on narratives from interviews with users and have proven great success. As I was asking during your talk in Oslo the challenge for Rughase as well as myself is to create an understanding in the company (mostly top-management) which is easier if you can show the text/interview to the managers that need to understand your findings. That is different in your case, of course.

Identity and Strategy: How Individual Visions Enable the Design of a Market Strategy That Works (Hardcover) by Olaf G. Rughase (Author)

Besides these things we work a lot with blogs as a way of creating a higher degree of cross-organizational internal understanding as well as a more authentic and dialogue-based communication with the stakeholders. And in that sense your project has some similarities (even though yours supports more openness as nobody except you will read it and that has obvious effects on the writers/informants).

Let me know how I can help you further – and yes, I would love to hear more.

Would you mind if I posted your email and my reply on our blog – this might be interesting to others....? In any event, please dont hesitate to share your thoughts there also!

Thanks for your comment on our website – actually it’s not even quite done but we’ve been so bussy over the past year or so that we didn’t find time to get on with it....

Best, Nikolaj

What the f... is the difference? You might ask. The question was also raised this weekend in Oslo at the 11.th International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand, Identity and Competitiveness by Dr. Kevin Money. More specifically he asked: Where does Brand end and Reputation begin? In short Dr. Moneys answer was that the Brand is what the company wishes to be experienced as by the costumers and stakeholders - and Reputation is what the costumers and stakeholders in fact experience the company to be. Dr. Money stated that you can own your Brand but you can't own what people feel about it (Reputation). As some of the listeners pointed out you could argue that it is not relevant to distinguish between what is Brand and what is Reputation - it's two sides of the same coin. But the reason why I think Dr. Money raised the question and the reason why it is important to distinguish between the two concepts become clear when you work with these concepts in practice. The clients want to know if the brand management activities work or not. Which brand activities are effective in the sense of having a positive impact on the Reputation of the company.
This is just a brief of one of many interesting discussions which took place at the conference in Oslo this weekend. Feel free to write a comment about your understanding on Brand vs. Reputation. Or maybe you think the differentiation is irrelevant? If so I would love to be let in on your reasoning.

This weekend we (Nanna, Nikolaj and I) went to Reputation Institutes 11th international conference in Oslo. The theme of the conference was innovation as a reputation platform, and consisted of three days with speeches from professors and practitioners from around the world. And what a great experience! Not only attending the different plenary sessions and discussions, but also being part of a gathering of so many qualified people, that have an interest in the same field as I do.

And obviously, this was a great opportunity to network. As I am still quite new in this business, I am not an experienced networker. But - there I was - with a bunch of new business cards ready to be handed out. And handed out they were; I met a lot of interesting people who I plan to keep contact with.
This experience made me think about networking as a "discipline". Because networking is important. Apparently very important. But to be honest, I think there's something about networking that has a negative or unauthentic dimension to it. It's almost like it has become such a hyped buzzword, that it looks more and more like a strategic discipline - some people "network" in such an aggressive way, that I can't help wondering what the benefits really are. Others seem to find it the most natural thing in the world to hand out their business card the moment they introduce themselves.

I guess different strategies work for different people, but I think that if networking should bring value to you personally or to your business, its essential to network with maybe fewer, but more relevant people (as in having a shared interest), and then actually keep contact - rather than networking only for the sake of networking! After this weekend, I prefer to think about networking as a talk between people with a shared interest. In this sense I can much better approach people and "network" in a natural way.

I just stumbled on two little clips about type. And not just any sort of type but some of the best in the world. Firstly, a short thing with Wim Crouwel, dutch designer and typographer:

And then, onto a film premiere which I have no idea wether or not will hit the danish cinemas but it would surprise me if it did: Helvetica. The famous typeface has existed for 50 years and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the most used typeface of contemporary time (well, I guess Microsoft sort of did a job for Arial and those things but... type in REAL designwork!). The typeface itself was designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 and has gotten quite a rennaisance through the past couple of years (well, it was never really out, but I've seen it even more lately). We did an identity for Askov Højskole that uses Helvetica and black/white portraits throughout in the fall which I think works well!

See a clip from Helvetica here: