Do any employers encourage blogging? Why?

Some forward-looking employers have recognised the PR potential of employee blogging. The fresh, personal style of a blog provides the kind of genuine intimacy that marketing and PR departments spend millions trying to create. A few companies, including McDonald’s and Dr Pepper/Seven Up, have even created fake blogs to promote their products, but in the democratic, free-speaking world of the blogosphere that kind of inauthenticity just doesn’t wash and they were quickly found out and their images correspondingly damaged.

But others have recognised that giving their employees the right to discuss their work, with set rules, can create an enormous amount of goodwill and buzz around their organisation. The best example is Microsoft, which has actively encouraged its staff to blog, bringing one of its bloggers, Robert Scoble, worldwide fame and transforming Microsoft’s image from that of a big, nasty corporate beast into a very human organisation. In the UK, a blog from within a sheet-metal company in Lancashire, The Tinbasher, has won a number of awards and is widely regarded in the blogging world as the perfect example of a corporate blog, because it talks honestly and informatively about the company as well as all kinds of other things going on in the author’s life.

It certainly won’t suit all companies, businesses or staff roles, but some employers, rather than being scared of blogging, might be better served by making the most of this remarkable phenomenon and setting some clear rules and encourage staff to blog away. Maybe the best thing you can do for yourself and your employer is to encourage them to take this step.