British communications writer Neville Hobson challenges something I wrote recently. To wit, that "good writing" is an essential part of blogging. Not so, he says. You just need a "voice" and some personality. And then you can "have at it," as they say. I disagree. But perhaps we're talking shades of gray. Yes, you gotta have an interesting voice, a point of view and something to say. But no, you don't need to be a professional writer... a Hemingway or a Proust. And if you had to choose between one or the other writing style to mimic, for god's sake go with Hemingway. If you've ever tried to get past the opening sentence of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu you know the guy couldn't resist showing off his grasp of syntax. Blog in shorter sentences, puhleeze. Back to the subject at hand, here's how I responded to Neville...
"Neville,
Your point is a good one - in that the "voice" and personality behind a blog, even a business blog, are so important. BUT I stand by my statement. An effective business blog can NOT be written with poor grammar, typos, bad syntax, etc. That just won't fly. It's bad branding, poor form, etc. Sorry, but I think *basic* good writing skills are a prerequisite. If blogging evangelists don't present a blog as a controllable marketing vehicle then companies won't adopt blogs. And we know what a cool tool they are." - DW
Debbie, we probably are talking about shades of grey.
The question that I posted about on my blog - "What if you're not the world's best writer but you still want to blog: what are your options?" - is posed from a very general perspective. So my answer looks at that very general view, which is reflective of a great deal (if not most) of the blogs you see out there.
If anyone wants to blog, I say: Go ahead, blog away! Express yourself. So you don't write very well. No matter, give it a go, see what happens!
"See what happens" isn't a comfortable phrase for most communicators, though. So where 'conditions apply' could be argued on the word "effective" especially in a business context. And there I do agree with you that being able to effectively communicate if the written word is involved does mean good writing ability.
However, if I were in a company and were making decisions on who could blog and who could not, I would firmly be on the side of free expression over good writing ability. No matter what the blog was.
But that's just me...
By the way, this is just about the same comment I left on my own blog in response to your comment there. What I'd like to see is how to knit together similar-topic posts and comments in different blogs. So we don't end up having parallel conversations. No easy way on TypePad, as far as I know.
Posted by: Neville Hobson | December 16, 2004 at 11:16 AM
Neville and Debbie,
I agree with Debbie that basic good writing skills are essential for an effective business blog.
However, in response to Neville's point about free expression, I think there's a middle ground: Would-be business bloggers who have valuable content to contribute should be allowed to create posts. These should then be edited for mechanical errors prior to publication. The voice, of course, should be left intact.
This suggestion assumes that the business in question has the staff, time, and skill set to handle each blog post twice. If a native editor is not available in house, many blog consultants are available to tweak the prose at a reasonable fee.
Re Neville's wish for a single blog that could knit together parallel conversations, it seems to me that TypePad does provide a way. TypePad Pro allows for multiple authors by invitation. Someone would need to moderate the list of invited authors and perhaps limit the array of topics, but I think this would be quite doable if guidelines were set in advance.
Please contact me offline if you are interested in exploring this further.
Lois C. Ambash
[email protected]
http://www.metaforix.com (website)
http://www.metaforix.info (Metaforix@ blog)
http://www.surveymonkey.com/infoyou (InfoYou information overload survey)
Posted by: Lois Ambash | December 27, 2004 at 02:45 PM