Marketing Technology

Fredrik points to an article from Compliance Solutions Advisor magazine, and makes some good points.

Firstly, he thinks they exaggerate the risks. That’s probably true, but something you should probably expect from anyone interested enough in compliance to write a magazine about it.

Also, he wonders why bloggers aren’t given a role in the recommended risk assessment team. I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Having just gone through the process of creating global guidelines for personal weblogs for Hill & Knowlton, the first thing we did was consult with those employees who already had blogs. Only when we had a draft set of guidelines did we get legal and HR approval (although the latter were an integral part of the whole process). This ensured we could keep the spirit and tone of the guidelines intact, and that they came from the people who had both direct experience of the medium and wanted to know the company’s expectations of them. I hope to be able to publish our guidelines here, as others have done, very soon.

I actually think the authors of the article in question have done a good job of raising the question of risk. Too many companies are hurtling themselves into the blogosphere in the hope of catching the wave of interest in the medium without really thinking about whether or why they should do so.

What is needed now, though, is the flipside of the equation: reward. Businesses take risks every day in order to reap some kind of reward. Usually, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.

I’ve almost completed a risk-reward model that will help companies decide whether they should blog. I intend to publish it in draft form here, and would welcome any feedback.