Managing a Corporate Blog, Like HP's

[The following is a guest post from HP's Tac Anderson.]

I recently joined HP as the Web 2.0 Strategic Lead for HP's LaserJet business group. When joining HP I had a lot of free reign to scope out the initiatives I thought we should be engaging in. My only predefined initiative was to figure out how to build on the success of Vince's blog.

Vince has been blogging for nearly a year at The LaserJet blog by Vince Ferraro. As the VP of Marketing for LaserJet we feel it is valuable having an executive speak on our business and industry. The target audience is actually existing LaserJet customers and industry analysts. Using site traffic numbers it is consistently the most successful HP blog.

To build on this success we're having Vince post more frequently - ideally once per week - and we're launching additional blogs and assisting other HP blogs with relevant LaserJet content.  All of this will be possible without adding additional resources by using the following tactics:

Have a calendar

• The number one thing I recommend to every person who is tasked with managing an executive's blog is to have a calendar of upcoming posts.
• This will help you manage content and it will help the executive start thinking about what to say in the post.
• There are topics that the exec will want to blog about as well as topic ideas that you collaboratively come up with. Your PR team (agency or in-house) can also be a good source of topic ideas.
• The calendar needs to be flexible. Topics will arise that need to be addressed immediately. It's a good thing when the exec throws off the calendar with unplanned topics.

Have a process

• We have a process where Vince initiates the content, usually by just writing out a post in a quick email, we then give it a quick edit and search engine optimize the content. (For tips on how to do this for corporate blog postings and to make this dovetail with future press releases read MetzMash next week - Adam)
  
• If it’s deemed necessary, because of the subject mater, we will quickly run the post through legal. At HP this has been a very painless process to date.
• After Vince gives one final approval we have a more technically adept person post the content because our blog software requires some HTML editing.
• All of this can all be done in a few hours if needed but we usually schedule one week for all the back and forth, especially if legal is involved.

Over the summer I dedicated a post to my friends on "the inside" where I gave 6 tips for implementing new media inside your organization. I had no idea at the time that I would soon be on "the inside" managing new media initiatives for a company like HP. While those tips were geared toward internal uses of new media they are just as applicable to external tactics as well.

If you have questions about specifics leave them in the comments. I'll chime in to answer as best I can. I'd like to thank Adam for inviting me to guest post. If you liked this post, check out my blog www.newcommbiz.com.

Comments

[David Spark]

For topic ideas, there are two options:

1. Go with the flow. Whatever the current buzz is have a comment on it. That way when people are searching said topic you'll pop up in results.

2. Be a trend setter. Come up with the topics for others to rally around. This requires a lot more work, a lot more creativity, and a ton more writing and editing, but it's what establishes you as a thought leader.

My 2.5 cents. :)

David Spark
Founder, Spark Media Solutions and host of The Spark Minute on Green 960.