How is this landscape changing? Paul [Rand] cited some stats about blogging, but blogging is just one phenomenon within a whole array of drivers that are radically changing the landscape. We know the changes from print to online. Last year, 18 of the top U.S. newspapers lost daily circulation. Nine of the top 10 lost Sunday circulation.
Gary Sheffer, who heads communication at GE, mentioned that when “I Love Lucy” was the top-rated television show in America, whenever that was, something like 50 percent to 60 percent of households tuned in. Today that crown is held by “Desperate Housewives,” and when it’s on, it gets something like 4 percent of households.
So if you have a marketing budget, an ad budget, you’re trying to get your message to an audience. Is that landscape changing? It certainly is. So blogging has to be fit into the context for how we market, how we communicate, not just to customers but to all our constituents.It does touch on control. And blogging represents a loss of control to some degree. The other thing you lose control of is who is in charge of the message? We have authorized spokespeople, we have media representatives, we have marketing and advertising people with a mandate. But what happens in our case, we have 329,000 employees in 170 countries. They have knowledge, they have opinions and now they have the tools to express those ideas and share that knowledge internally and externally. What happens is they’re unauthorized but they can act. So democratization of both the content and the means, the channels, is occurring. You don’t obviously have to have a TV network or a newspaper or magazine to be heard or to interact.
So, what is the corporation’s response [to blogs]? In IBM’s case, we’ve been grappling with this issue for seven years. Last spring, members of my team came together and said, “We have to do something about blogging.” First, I said, “what is a blog?” “What are you talking about?” And they told me and I said, “Wow, this is not good. I don’t know if we should permit it.” Well, they said, we have 8,956 blogs. And we have an incalculable number of employees who are out there in the blogosphere. And we don't know today how many employees back in the spring of last year were out there. What were they saying? Were they leaking? What were they saying about us? We don’t know.
“Well, we need to have policies, guidelines,” I said.
That’s why we’re coming to see you, they said.
“Well, we should get them written.”
Well, they said, we actually have them done.
So, what the team did was to drop into this blogging community a “wiki” – a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit something in cyberspace. They said, “The company can’t say you can’t blog. But, on the other hand, you’d all agree, the company can’t say, do anything you want. Give away intellectual property. Attack each other. Whatever. What is the responsible blogging policy? Put it right out there within this community.”
Ten days later, these guidelines were written. They went to the head of human resources and the general counsel for review. I took my pen out. None of us could find a typo. The guidelines not only were correct, they were thoughtful, responsible and really well written. They represented the strategic use of the blogosphere internally and externally. And we approved the guidelines in about two days without a single edit. http://www.snellspace.com/IBMGuide
Our blogging policy has taken off internally and externally and a lot of lessons were learned in the process. But it began with an acknowledgment that we cannot choose not to do something because that in itself is a decision and it’s already been made. So, let’s be strategic and responsible, consistent with our brand and values.