We’ve talked before about finding employees to blog within your company.
But have you ever thought about encouraging your employees to blog as individuals as well?
Recently, Jonathan Schwartz, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, told the Economic Times that company leaders should encourage employees to blog as individuals on their own personal blogs. It’s great to see business leaders encouraging employees to write on their own. Sure, some of the commentary will likely be about the company they work for, but there are many benefits for both employer and employee.
Encourage Employees to Blog
The linked article above has much on what makes employee blogging great for businesses and employees. It’s worth a couple minutes to read the entire article. I thought I’d add a few of my own thoughts.
Employee Professional Development
Blogging is a great way for employees to develop as professionals. It seems like most bloggers crave traffic and the attention of their peers. In order to find an audience with a blog the blogger is forced to learn what content people want to consume. It’s a learned skill and only employees that blog will likely understand how to gain the attention of an audience in the Information Age.
Content is what drives the Internet and it’s essential for companies to have strategies to attract the attention of an audience. When the employees learn this skill they can bring it to their daytime job and help the business. Bloggers know how to write, record, and create content people crave. This can lead to great textual and video content skills, but it can also lead to great product development.
Professional development is a great way to entice new employees to your company as well. People look for ways to improve themselves professionally and personally. A company that encourages these things – as opposed to just hiring workers – is more likely to a better workforce.
Encourage your employees to blog. It’s great for their professional development, which is good for the employee and good for the company as well.
Company Brand Exposure
The trickle down effect is something that’s been mentioned in various areas of our world for a few decades.
Well, the opposite is kind of true in the blogging world. Instead of the top few having their efforts trickle down to the rest of the world, employees that blog can have their voice and exposure trickle up the chain at your company to positively impact your brand.
Think of what it would be like to have a team of A-people working for your business. These folks would be well known bloggers in various fields and well recognized by various niche audiences. This is great exposure for your brand and has the potential to lead to increase sales and profits.
If your employees have an influence with a community it can mean great things for your company. The trick is you’ll have to have a great business, which goes beyond the scope of this post.
But if you already have a great business, encourage your employees to blog and it could lead to some great branding opportunities.
Final Thoughts
It’s great that companies like Sun, Google, IBM, and many others (per article above) are encouraging employees to blog. In reality, employees are doing it already whether you know about it or not. They’ll probably continue whether you approve or not. The best thing you can do is to learn about blogging, its benefits, and then open up communication with your employees.
Blogging can be great for you and your employees.
Encourage blogging.
Mac Attack image courtesy of Robby Mueller