Suppose a collaborative business blog is part of the right social media strategy for your business, but senior management has concerns about blogging. Not the kinds of concerns which make senior management demand, "Absolutely do not create a collaborative blog." No, we're talking passive-aggressive concerns where senior management will allow (or potentially encourage) a collaborative blog to be developed. Right before the blog goes live, however, they clamor for multiple review points on each blog post so management is comfortable nothing will happen (in every sense of the word, unfortunately).
What do you do?
How do you protect the timeliness, relevance, and personal feel a successful collaborative business blog should have from death through a thousand - okay, I'm exaggerating...make it "ten" - senior management tinkerers?
Determining the Underlying Senior Management Concerns
The first step is better understanding and narrowing in on the nature of your senior management group's challenges. You can do this by probing on a variety of potential issues that might drive their concern. You have to find out if their concerns about a collaborative business blog stem from content which:
- Violates confidentiality
- Is incorrect
- Damages customer relationships
- Compromises professional standards
- Is off brand for your company
- Is personally inappropriate or objectionable
- Could trigger regulatory or legal issues
Figure out which of these (or other issues) are the real pain points with a collaborative business blog. Additionally, determine who would need to review blog posts to relieve the pain for each area of concern.
Addressing the Underlying Issues
Based on the conversation's outcome and the breadth of the reviewer list, one of a few possibilities will likely materialize:
- Upon discussion, you're able to mitigate the concerns either at the start, or perhaps after some initial "learning curve" period, OR
- The number of people who'd need to review posts is manageable within your blogging process, OR
- The level of review is so great it will be burdensome or even crippling to the business blogging effort
If the last bullet is where you wind up, it's far better finding out ahead of time before launching a blog hampered by its inability to function at an appropriate social media pace.
At this point, it's critical to get creative with alternative ideas to simplify an unwieldy process, take more comprehensive steps to ally their concerns, or in the extreme, delay or pull the plug on the collaborative blog before it becomes one of those "they started it, but it died out in about two month" blogs.
And nobody wants that. – Mike Brown
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours.
