Make Your Corporate Blog Believable

In a blog post today, Dec. 10, Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang offered up a "simple heuristic health check to gauge whether your corporate blog is going to be trusted by your readers."

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Jeremiah offers eight points that should be gospel advice for anyone trying to communicate through blogging, not just for companies. It's not rocket science: People trust people. The more personal the communication, the more effective and believable the writing. I won't repeat everything Jeremiah writes. There's a link to his post for a reason, for reading what he wrote in his voice and in full context.

But I will grab a couple snippets to make a broader point. On "writing style" Jeremiah writes:

Great: Blog is written in a human voice
Bad: Content looks vetted by corp comm
Horrible: Rehashed press release

Microsoft employee blogs are a mixed bag on writing style. There are many good ones that I regularly read. They're personal and cover broad topics. Others I treat like press releases. They dispatch announcements about Microsoft news and not much other. There isn't a lot of depth or personal connection.

Dare Obasanjo is one of the more balanced Microsoft employee bloggers. His posts have great depth—too much to have been ghost-written by PR professionals. He offers practical guidance to Microsoft software and services users and developers, and blogs about other companies' software and services. You get to know Dare by reading his posts, which show what song is "now playing." I dunno, Dare. Britney Spears?

Human voice is personal in other ways. One change I made after taking over Microsoft Watch and had been writing it long enough that I felt comfortable asking my editor's permission: referring to people by first names rather than surnames. The journalistic approach refers to people by last name, which is highly impersonal. I want this blog to be more personal, and that means the people I write about. It's an approach more corporate blogs should adopt. Surname references are what you would read in a press release.

This human voice is more than about writing. It's expressed through Tweeting and even through video. Company blogging is about communication, which should be by more means than just a blog. On Tuesday, Pete Steege, a Global Segment manager for Seagate, posted a YouTube video of himself freezing a portable hard drive into his backyard ice rink. He lives in Minnesota, where it's damn cold right now. Pete takes a very personal approach to storage. There's no news release about Seagate products—no news anything. But you want to know what will happen during the spring thaw. Will the drive still work? Will Pete recover all his personal information? Or during winter will identity thieves geotag Pete's location and hack through the ice for the drive?

I have a question for you. Which do you find more believable: blogs written by Microsoft employees or Tweets sent by them? Please respond in comments or by e-mail. I'm guessing that many people will say Tweets are more believable, in part because they're obviously more personal. There's more sense of person-to-person contact.

Jeremiah also recommends "humility," which was a defining characteristic of Robert Scoble's blog when he worked for Microsoft. Robert blogged with his heart on his sleeve and he reproached himself or Microsoft when wrong. Jeremiah writes about humility:

Great: Admits when wrong and discusses in open the short comings of the company and product and demonstrates in public how it will be improved
Good: Admits shortcomings but combats and defends the criticism, also known as spin
Bad: Only discusses the company in the best possible light, and may link, but not take on critics
Horrible: Never discuss the short comings of the company on the blog

Press releases aren't humble. They're written with voice-of-God authority. The company is doing this and it's the right thing to do. No arguments. A good company employee blog would be more neutral and even a bit critical on the same news or topic. But Robert's Microsoft employee posts did much more. He would criticize Microsoft when he thought the company had done wrong.

While Jeremiah's points are valuable, and I agree with him, there is a glaring oversight. It's a commonly overlooked attribute that transcends the blogging genre: storytelling. Blog posts should tell a good story. The most effective communications tell good stories. The better the yarn, the more interesting and effective the communication. Advertisers know well the importance of storytelling. All good ads tell some kind of story that makes the product or service more meaningful—more personal—to you.

I've criticized Microsoft's "I'm a PC" commercials for their Windows brand weakness, but they do tell stories—and exceptionally well in short snippets. "I'm a PC, and I sell fish." The statement and the guy's image convey his identities as PC user and fish seller. The story is more effective as each person in the commercial proclaims "I'm a PC." Unsaid but communicated: "And I'm proud of it!"

So my challenge to Microsoft employee bloggers: What's your story? Pete from Seagate started a story by burying a hard drive in ice. I want to know how it ends, and I will check in over the winter to watch his video updates. If you want your blog to be believed, to be trusted:

• Be personal
• Be humble
• Tell a story

Storytelling is the most difficult of the three attributes. There are so many bad movies because they don't tell good stories. Storytelling is tough. But just by being more personal, you'll tell some kind of story. Something else: People love gossip. So give it to them. Tell folks how you come up with such-and-such product code name. How grandma responded to Windows 7 Pre-beta. The Microsoft employee blogs that I regularly read—the ones I believe most—are personal and tell good stories.

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