Staring down fear of blogging at IABC blog panel

Had a blast yesterday moderating IABC's blog panel here in D.C.

It was wonderful to meet several corporate bloggers face to face that I've been emailing and speaking with by phone: Paul Rosenfeld, Intuit's blogging evangelist and the force behind the QuickBooks Online Edition blog; GM's Bill Betts representing the Fastlane blog (Bill is Web Services Manager for GM's global corporate communications office in Detroit); and Kevin Holland (VP in charge of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America's ACCABuzz blog).

Paul flew in from Calif. for less than 24 hours (as did Bill) in order to participate. A huge thanks from me and from a filled-to-capacity and attentive audience. I'm sorry we couldn't get to every one of your questions.

After offering a brief overview of corporate blogging, I posed some (vaguely) provocative questions and then let the three panelists do most of the talking. I framed our discussion around "fear of blogging" and asked each panelist in turn: "Why aren't you afraid of blogging, why are you doing this and what results are you seeing?"

  Interestingly, Steve Broback, creator of the Blog Business Summit, is thinking of using the same theme ("getting past the fear of blogging") for his Aug. 17 - 19, 2005 conference in San Francisco. (This is a  great event if you're looking for a useful business blogging conference. I'll be there as a speaker.)

Some of my questions for the panelists:

• Are blogs a viable tool for corporate communications given the fact that blogging, by definition (open and transparent), is the opposite of what defines most corporate culture?
• If the majority of Americans don't know what a blog is (40 - 60% are not familiar with blogs, according to eMarketer's Business of Blogging report), then who is going to read corporate blogs?
• What's the first thing a company should do to start blogging? (This prompted an interesting point-counterpoint response from Intuit's Rosenfeld and GM's Betts. Said Betts, "Study, study, study the blogosphere first." Said Rosenfeld, "Just do it! Then go back and see what your results are."

Thanks to IABC conference blogger Jeremy Popper for his write up of our session.

Comments

[Bill Betts]

I've been thinking since my return to the office that we had quite an impact on Monday. Questions from the audience indicated a wide range of Web and Blog understanding, but I think we raised awareness significantly. We instantly began working very well together...not bad for a group who had met each other for the first time only a few minutes before the panel began. Maybe we should think about taking our show on the road!

[Kevin Holland]

Debbie, I thought the panel went great -- good questions from all over the spectrum. Seems clear from the audience that a big part of the "fear factor" is really fear of lawyers. Part of that is a natural tension between communicators and legal staff, but made me think that there's probably a great need to educate corporate attorneys on blogging as well as communicators/marketers/senior execs. Thanks for the invite to participate on the panel and for putting it together!

[Jeremy Pepper]

Pepper - the name's Pepper. AAAAH, people think it's Popper because of the PR firm's name.

I think it went well, and it should be interesting to see what IABC does next.