January 15th, 2007 by Wendy McAuliffe
The Liberate Media blog has survived its first three months, and as part of our 2007 review, Lloyd and I have been discussing whether to continue positioning it as a corporate blog where we each aim to share the same ‘voice’, or to reposition it as a ‘Directors’ Blog’ enabling our individual voices to be stronger.
I’m pleased that we’re thinking about these things, as the blogging phenomenon is so fast-paced that it’s important to be reviewing the positioning and messaging of a corporate blog on a regular basis.
I decided to share our thoughts after reading about the Telegraph’s crackdown on its bloggers, warning them not to blog about the paper and exercise caution about revealing journalistic “tricks of the trade”.
A leaked memo from the Telegraph’s web news editor, Shane Richmond, published in the Guardian, reads:
“Please avoid blogging about your relationship with your employer, whether the Telegraph Media Group as an entity, ‘the desk’ or ‘my boss’, even in jest. Such comments are frequently misconstrued and can easily backfire.”
While Lloyd and I are not planning to crackdown on eachother’s blogging in this way, the incident reveals how greater editorial freedom can be possible through individual voices, rather than a corporate ‘voice’.
This was obviously the issue at stake in the recent removal of Sam Sethi from the TechCrunch blog.
Watch this space to see what we decide to do…
January 15th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Yo. My 10 cents.
1 - good on you for eschewing traditional pr agency website and getting straight into the blogging. i hope you think it’s been a beneficial decision.
2. I reckon the subject matters and choice of content for the Liberate blog should be the unifying ‘corporate’ theme, but the voices should be your own individual unfettered voices .
keep it up.
January 15th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
PS. This blog has a Google PageRank of 4/10. You would have had to have gone great guns to have got the same search engine goodness with a ‘normal website’ in the same timescale. That is a marketing asset you now have.
January 16th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Crack down on Lloyd. He’s a loose cannon and frankly a timebomb waiting to ’splode.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Thanks for the feedback and advice Will, much appreciated! We certainly think that communicating our thoughts, and personality, via our blog has been extremely beneficial. It’s one thing to talk about it and another to do it, as a wise man once told me…
January 16th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
And as for you Mr Mayfield…but to be fair, you have a point
January 19th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I’m in agreement with Will. It’s a company blog in the sense that it’s under your business banner, but that doesn’t mean it should’t reflect your individual personalities - which are coming through more clearly as time progresses.
And remember, without people there ain’t no company at all.