Here's an interesting item from Kami Huyse writing on the Communications Overtones blog. It dates back to February, but the content is as relevant as ever. In this post entitled "Top 10 Risks For Corporate Blogs," the writer does a good job of touching upon many, if not most, of the fears and anxieties associated with corporate blogging.

I have a list of perhaps softer, related risks that carry harsher outcomes to the validity and viability of a corporate blog.

What, for example, is the risk if a corporate blog becomes the property of, and just another tool for, a company's existing traditional communications infrastructure? Can communications professionals trained in the development and sanitation of public statements, evolve to, cope with, and otherwise accommodate the daily expressions of corporate thought and inspiration penned by others, approved by no one, and published raw for all time and for instantaneous consumption worldwide?

Perhaps I worry most about what this risk implies for the blog concept. If corporations corrupt blogging by sanitizing it, establishing barriers to "edgy," and doing message management and manipulation as trained to do, then the corporate blog becomes little more than a daily website update… more of the same old corporate speak. The corporation's return on investment will be about zero; blogs will take another hit from those who counsel today that blogs are of no real value or consequence.

Will this happen? Let me answer that by asking you a question: How many corporations have you worked with that have had a high tolerance for joining or leading the public discussion of their bad news, bad habits, mistakes, miscalculations, product deficiencies, strategic weaknesses, blurry vision and so forth. I ask because real corporate blogs from leadership companies will from time to time touch upon these things. The best will not shrink from it. In my view, it takes an enormous communications ability to converse appropriately about these things. It requires the combination of a superior writing talent, a deep knowledge of the company, and something like "tenure" for the writer so that he or she can converse in the blogosphere freely and without the fear of employment retribution.

If you ask me, I just don't know how many organizations have this much self-confidence; this much trust; and, this much willingness to try something s new and as risky as blogging when it is still acceptable in their view to continue doing what everyone else is doing: using all the old tools even if they don't work so well.

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