It’s the new buzz, blogging. It’s so new that every time I type the word in my MS Word document it gets underlined by my auto spellcheck thingie: I shall have to add it manually to my spellcheck dictionary! It’s taking the internet by storm, and is categorized under the ‘tech’ term ’social software’. And by that, we mean the new way that people are connecting with one another, thinking together, and having conversations across the global village.

Companies like Microsoft (http://blogs.msdn.com//) and General Motors (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/) have already discovered how blogging, in all it’s transparent, no-edit, warts ‘n all realness, can help show a more human face of the company to the world. It’s turning the old marketing adage ‘control the message’ on its head, and allowing companies to engage with their customers in a very exciting new way. Customers can come onto the blogs, air their opinions, offer (positive and negative) feedback on products and services, and take the company to task on any issue they like. This, in itself is not new: what is new, is that the forum is public, transparent, and conversational. It’s basically market research for free!

Now the purpose of this article is not to expound or explain the blogosphere (another word my spellcheck hates). The best way to understand the blogging world as it exists for corporate companies is to check out a few blogs (www.avovision.co.za, http://www.csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com, http://www.tmtd.biz, http://www.stormhoek.com) that explain it. What I really want to explore is how this new phenomenon can be used inside a company, an internal blog that serves to do for the ‘internal customers’ of a company what other blogs are doing ‘out there’.

It’s always a challenge within huge corporate companies to deliver internal messages so that all the people in the organization remain appraised of latest developments, changes, new product launches or enhancements, brand messages and the like. All sorts of media are employed to deliver and control internal messaging: company newspapers; internal radio or TV broadcasts; the ubiquitous email messages; websites; internal promotions and brochures and even weekly publications of the CEO’s diary.

The problem all internal marketing faces (which is not dissimilar to the external marketing space), is that consumption of each medium declines over time. One of the challenges is that internal marketing (if done properly) follows the same marketing disciples of external marketing: ‘control the message’. So most internal messages read like external stuff it feels like wallpaper after a while and becomes invisible to employees to a large extent. Where companies had 100% attendance and viewership when their new, sexy, internal TV systems were first installed, after a couple of years, I see TVs on all over buildings, with workers happily working away in their cubicles, paying no attention whatsoever to the company broadcasts!

Another problem with existing internal media channels, is that most of them are very ‘one way traffic’ in their nature. They are not internal conversations, and are rather internal announcements and broadcasts: by the very makeup of their technology, they seldom allow room for reply. Even if the broadcast is in email form, reply is not really encouraged. People may reply to the message individually, but then any conversation that ensues would be between the two correspondents only no public forum debate unless, of course some poor soul hits the ‘reply all’ button, in which case the feedback from the ‘all’ would be fast and deadly, if my own experience is anything to go by!

Internal blogging sites may well be a medium for internal communication that addresses some of the challenges with the existing channels. Internal blogs mean that anyone is invited to participate. Communication no longer has the ‘company line’ flavour it becomes real and transparent, where employees can engage one another in debate that defies the hierarchical structure of an organization and allows voices to be heard from all angles. It’s no longer a one-way medium either, but rather a conversation that takes place in a public space.

Stephen Covey proposes that the 8th habit should be to discover one’s own voice, and then enable others to find theirs. Maybe this is one of the ways that organizations can use technology and the shift in communication and connection behaviour to allow their workers the opportunity to find their voices at last. What an amazing opportunity for HR people to keep in touch with the tone and culture of the organization, without engaging really expensive consultants to manage the research.

Make no mistake; internal blogging is not for sissies! A company has to be brave enough to know that many controversial and sensitive issues will be blogged: senior management may be criticized, policies may be ridiculed, and disgruntled employees may rage on in what may be seen as a morale-damaging way. Although there are ways of managing content on blogs, it’s not recommended that you hide the bad stuff. Part of employees becoming more engaged in the work place is about them feeling like they can trust the company they work for. Being able to vent and engage in debate on internal issues in a transparent way without censure goes a long way towards building a robustness and trust relationship in the company, particularly in this new world of work, and with a younger generation that values transparency and realness very highly.

Besides worrying about the potential damage that could be done by employees let loose to debate in a public forum, companies would do well to look at the benefits, and potential value that can be created in a blogging forum. People could also begin to blog about their successes, innovations and best practice. They may begin to deliver recognition to others in this forum, and make each other ‘famous’.

Company management may be pleasantly surprised (as I have been with our own company blog), how seriously people take the blogging space, and how hard they try to contribute meaningfully. They may also be pleasantly surprised by how this medium is ‘consumed’. Once people have blogged themselves, they want to continue to return to the site to see what other people have commented about their thoughts, and continue the conversation. All of a sudden, they have a reason to come back to the site, because that’s where the intrigue is!

There are already over 23 million bloggers actively blogging on the internet today. Google’s stats on new blogs registered are astounding (a Google search for the word ‘blog’ returns over 2 billion results!). It is becoming the trend for how people are connecting with one another globally. I suspect that companies who stay out of the blog space for too long will be sorry, and stale (more quickly than you think).

Avocado Vision (www.avovision.co.za) is a company that helps people communicate with people more effectively. For more insight into how Avo can help your people to connect better, please call Jules on 011 614 0206

…when I said to him that things come into being as a result of a critical mass of belief in them. My favourite reference for this idea comes from Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods”. But I’ve heard it repeated in a huge variety of contexts. For example, in the shoo-wow new-age space I’ve heard it said that if just a handfull of people focussed properly for only 5 minutes on the problem, they could turn the planet’s geophysical influenza around. And I’m almost sure that my sister’s belief in the Boogy-man as a child made noises happen from inside the cupboard. Look what happened to Tinkerbell when (someone) said they didn’t believe in fairies. (Let’s also not forget the Celestine Prophesy)

I’m back/still on the branding journey of thought. I just wondered whether if all the Coke cans & bottles in shops simultaneously disappeared this moment, the Coke brand would still exist? And since the answer is yes, in what form? And if you weren’t allowed to make reference to anything about the (out-of-bounds-to-my-children) buzz drink, could you describe what the Coke brand was? Yes.

I’m thinking, in getting to the crux of the Avo brand, let’s ask “Who are we?” over and over again until we get a satisfactory answer. My favourite Nedbank guru, Carlos, told me about a retreat he went on (or heard about?) where retreatees were asked this question every day on waking up. Tom Peters says we should, and David Goatham tries to get us to…

The Avo brand is no longer a Brand of One, neither is it a Brand of a group of people or a team. It is represented by everything that the company does (the verbs it enacts) even down to the individually labelled shelves in the kitchen. Every component of the organism that is Avocado Vision carries the DNA of the brand like every cell in the body does. Avo is all about people, but the company is also about its systems, its processes, its waste-paper baskets, its stationary non-glut etc. So, stop for a moment basking in the glow of the spectacular Personalities that make up the Avo team, and think for me (us) about the broader-deeper picture. What is the Avocado Vision Brand?

Avos, since the primary Brand-delivery mechanism for our company is its people, what would the brand be if you took them out of the equation simultaneously and at this moment? Tell me. This is not a trick question.