At this point in time there are plenty of people who realize the value of a blog and have ventured into the process of blogging (hopefully on a regular baises). However there is rarely enough thought into the mechanics of the blog and how it will be used to add value to a company or organization. One of the fundamental aspects of a blog is the voice that is used to speak to the readers, it can make or break a blog and often times it isn’t even an afterthought.

Blogs are conversational by nature, they tend to be more relaxed and casual… but they don’t have to be. Many corporate blogs chose not to have the relaxed and casual speaking voice, instead picking some medium between a PR voice and the casual voice that a personal blogger would adopt. This is OK in the right situations, even great. Some companies and industries wouldn’t benefit from a casual toned blog, they need that level of credibility and the authentic nature of a blog complements the credibility. However the point is that as a corporate blogger you need to know if that is the voice that will best suite the blog and your goals.

There are times where a more casual voice would provide the most value to a blog. Consider large consumer corporations, which feel like faceless monoliths. These corporations are often painted as evil bloodsucking money-grubbing voids, devoid of any real human characteristics despite the fact that they completely consist of people. It might be easy to try and create a blog that has shows no errors, no weaknesses, no additional areas for people to criticize and nit-pick. However what these corporations really need is a real and authentic voice, a feeling of being human. Consider the GM Fastlane blog, Bob Lutz doesn’t take the time to spell check, fix every grammatical error, and that is wonderful. Bob is a human, a person you could walk up and talk to, someone who has hopes and dreams for both himself and his company. Yet some many people see GM as a horrid faceless entity that lay’s off workers and steals pension plans. A squeaky clean blog written in marketing/pr speak would do nothing to combat this feeling, and it would have very little to add.

On the other hand, if you look at a company like AVL North America (a client of my other company) they would not benefit from a casual blog. They produce highly technical engine testing systems for use by large companies like GM, Cat, etc… Their audience doesn’t care that the people building these systems are regular guys like you and me, they want to make sure they select the best equipment to ensure they produce the best possible product they can. AVL would be better suited by a very technical in nature blog, that shows expertise and customer support. A completely different voice than that of GMs Fast Lane blog.

Although rarely talked about blogs are used almost as often as private internal tools as they are external marketing and PR tools. There are tens of thousands of companies who have intern blogs designed to aid those who work for the organization, ranging from sales blogging reports to HR related issues.

However I don’t necessarily want to talk about those issues today. A post over at experience matters got me talking about the practice of blogging on how it effects internal branding efforts. In this case the blog is an external marketing tool, read by the public and published by employees of the company Critical Mass.

It was mentioned that they have an editorial board as a method of generating ideas, which was met with a variety of different reactions. However it really got me thinking about the process of writing a blog by members of an organization can really make a dramatic difference in the understanding of the brand internally. The process of thinking about what is valuable to your brand enthusiasts and readers, the voice of the brand, and the message in order to produce quality and relevant blog posts is an extremely effective way to educate people on the brand itself.

In order to write an effective blog post you have to think about your readers (who are all advocates, potential customers, or interested parties in your brand) and what type of content they would find valuable. This process of discovery is very relevant to discovering what is important to your target market. What messaging and types of content is valuable to your target market, online and offline. How do these people want to be communicated to? and with what voice?

By assigning those who communicate with people outside the organization to writing blog posts, you end up teaching them how to “wear the brand” when they make contact with others. The values, voice, and messaging will be clear as everyone will have had to think and focus about how to communicate in a way that is true to the brand.

While there are other ways to promote internal branding, this method is proactive and keeps your brand stakeholders engaged and communicating with those who are happy to listen and respond. Rather than simply do seminars, activities, and other hokey methods why not acclimate everyone to the brand message in a way that has multiple benefits and is organic, authentic, and real?

First it was the phone, once upon a time it was a new technology that altered how people communicated in a life changing way. Now it is the internet. Only the internet has a much greater impact.

Not only has emailed revolutionized the way we communicate, but the internet itself has opened up a chasm of different effective and more productive ways to communicate. Wiki’s, instant messaging, forums, blogs, social networks, email, virtual conferencing, chat rooms, the list goes on.

Yet some people want to stick fast to an age old worn and torn method, the meeting. I have never been a huge fan of meetings, they suck up way more time than they are productive. Travel, preparation, concentration shift (twice), delays, small talk… often times you spend more time with the tasks surrounding the meeting than meetings themselves.

Granted there are times where meetings simply are the only way to accomplish specific tasks, and are completely valid. However they are performed way too often.

Seth Godin recommends skipping at least one meeting a week, see how it impacts you for better or worse. My estimate is that in almost every occasion you can find better ways to communicate the same information quicker and more clear than holding another meeting. Work schedules, reporting, and continual information exchange will save everyone time and keep people updated all along a project not just at specific intervals.

At BlogFire we use project Wiki’s that allow clients and internal contractors alike to watch and update the progress of the project with out requiring a two - three hour disruption. However there are many ways to archive the same effect and cut down on unnecessary meetings.