Last week Shel Holtz held forth on his blog:
About 18 or 19 years ago, scorn was heaped upon me when I insisted
that pretty much every company would need to adopt email and provide
employees with email addresses. I got the same reaction 12 or 13 years
ago when I proclaimed all companies would require a presence on the
World Wide Web. Today, email and a website are a de facto requirement for most businesses, large or small.
Today, I’m taking the same stand on corporate blogs (a reversal of
my earlier position, which suggested that a corporate blog was a
strategic decision):
Every business should have an authoritative, official corporate blog.
As one of the prominent scorn-heapers he refers to—Shel and I have gone at it hook and tong about communication technology over the years, with me usually playing the role of provocative gadfly and Shel getting to play the genius visionary—you'd think I'd have a shovel-full for Holtz's latest pronouncement.
But I don't. Despite my deep skepticism of most organizations' ability to create readable blogs and my confirming observation that most corporate blogs suck like a bucket of ticks, I think I agree with Shel's thoughtful and elaborate reasoning, and his conclusion that every organization needs a blog.
Do you?
Every organization ought to have a good blog. If it’s bad, what’s the point?
Well, clearly no blog is better than a bad blog.
And good blogs are hard to pull off in a corporate environment, requiring what many organizations don’t have: leaders with fresh ideas, and talent and nards required to communicate boldly and regularly.
What Holtz is saying is, “All organizations should have good blogs.”