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Scoble has a good post about corporate fear of blogging, which he sees as an an artifact of a management system that doesn’t empower its employees to act on behalf of customers. Many people have been asking him for ways to convince their boss to ‘get’ blogging. Scoble’s answer is one word: Kryptonite.

If you don’t know the story, do a Google search for Kryptonite and “Bic Pen”. We’ll wait.

We just watched the destruction of an American brand. 75% know about it. Why? Because of one or two weblogs and the new word-of-mouth network. Yes, Engadget and Gizmodo do have that kind of power. Engadget alone has 250,000 of the most influential readers the world has ever seen.

My second question is: “What have you heard from Kryptonite about this issue?”

Not a single person has been able to tell me the answer yet (yes, they have an official response on the home page of their site, but no one in my audiences has been able to articulate the answer to me). Why not?

I went looking for the answer. I searched Google for “Kryptonite Weblog.” None found. “Kryponite blog.” None found. I went looking for executive names. None found. So, I couldn’t look up whether any of the execs had a blog.

Only a press release on the home page. No way to have a conversation. No way to tell the company off. I looked for comments from the company on Engadget and BoingBoing. I didn’t find any, but maybe they are there somewhere. Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, tracked the Kryptonite story in the blogosphere and did some interesting graphic analysis.

Now this is a powerful example. There are more every day although not as visible and so easy to point at. For us, bloggers, this is basic stuff that we have been learning all along with daily blogging. But how do you explain this process and the emergent mind-shift to someone who has never heard of blogging? That is a challenge we face every time we get a questions “So what’s this ‘blogging’ anyway?” It is astonishing at times that there are many people in large companies who still haven’t heard about blogs although they may be in positions where it should be their job to know about blogging. Usually their job descriptions are something like head of interactive media or community managers, or customer relations etc. Sigh.

But there is more from Scoble, namely six reasons why companies should let their employees blog:

1. People don’t trust corporations.
2. People don’t like talking to corporations.
3. That old “markets are conversations” thing.
4. Which is more believeable? (A press release from, say, Ford Motor Company, or a few blog entries from the people who designed the new Ford Mustang’s powertrain.)
5. Blogs build customer evangelists.
6. Blogs build market momentum and get adoption.

Responding to Scoble’s observations is Michael Gartenberg on Analyst Weblog. He says that there may be good reason to be afraid to let employees blog:

There are real issues when employees blog. Some companies have very specific legal regulations what they can say or what they can’t say. Like it or not we live in a litigious society and words as we know can come back to haunt us.

He also challenges the example:

The Kryptonite example isn’t a good example either, there were issues discovered and the company chose to be silent. A weblog wouldn’t have changed that and they could have reacted without one.

I think he dismissed the benefits of the kind of communication a blog would enable too fast. A blog would have changed the way people perceive the company and how much credibility direct and immediate communication can generate and diffuse many negative reactions. Silence should really not be an option for a company in crisis, what with the flood of information, their problems are going to be discussed. Why let others tell your story? The company can become the leader of the news on the crisis (as it should be) and its communications instead of becoming a flustered, sweating and evasive victim of the hounding media (or increasingly blogs).

There is also the issue of organisational culture and as Michael Gartenberg points out not all are suitable. Agreed. He then identified three types of blogs associated with a company:

1. Using blogs and other tools to monitor the company and brands.
2. Official corporate blogs.
3. Employees personally blogging but identified with the company.

The first is just common sense and staying on top of new tools. The second one is what we do. Blogging guidelines and training are essential, they bring out the best in potential bloggers and keep at bay the worst.

They need to often be careful of language used that can have ramifications down the road. It’s not just as simple as getting a copy of MT and putting out your message to the world. Establishing policy and knowing who is saying what is critical. There are worse things in the world than not having a weblog and corps are right to tread lightly and to carefully establish policies and rules before they jump in.

Exactly, the legal dos and don’ts now need to be explained to blogging employees. To me it can only be a good thing to treat them as intelligent agents and educate them in the consequences of their actions. The word empowerement springs to mind…

As for the third one, employee personal blogs that are not directly sanctioned by the company is indeed trickier, however, as Michael points out a policy on personal blogs should go some way to manage the potential risks.

All in all, the benefits of blogging outweigh the risks, which is not to say that the risks should not be mitigated. That is why we have spend considerable time trying to understand the legal implication of this new medium and its impact on company communication. Oh, and have a section on bloglaw manned by our trusty blawger, David Carr.