Technical Writer

My boss used to write his own blog on our company intranet. 

It was easy enough to do in SharePoint (2003). He added each blog as a portal listing.

The blogs were popular.  He used the same chatty, informal style he used at our team meetings, and gave us the same type of news—about our team, about what was happening in the company, about where we were going with our projects.  Everyone enjoyed them.

He stopped after four posts.

I asked him why?  Was it too much work?

It wasn’t the effort of doing it, he said.  In fact, he enjoyed writing them. The problem was that people took what he said as fact, and started copying and pasting his comments as facts into other reports.

In one blog, for example, he spoke about a major project he hoped to start before Christmas.  It didn’t start until March.  He had not committed to the Christmas date in any formal report, but other departments took the details from his blog as fact.

Now you might say he should have known that would happen, but what is a blog, and what do you expect from it?

By its very nature a blog is supposed to be more informal than a standard business document.  More of a chat than a ‘real’ report.  Most people accept that.  Had this man stood in front of his team at a team meeting and told us exactly what he said in his blog, it wouldn’t have been a problem.  But this time he wrote it down.

If you are considering starting a blog at work, think about the potential consquences.  Blogs are fashionable at present, and not just in the personal space.  The CEO of our parent company even does one, although I confess it’s most of us don’t read that—it’s somewhat bland and plays very safe (with good reason).

Blogs are, by their very nature, public (even on an intranet), and the blogger has little control over what other people do with the content.  Anything in the blog is liable to be quoted, and often misquoted. It’s a hazard of blogging.  If the blog is too safe it doesn’t tell the reader anything useful. People don’t read it, and so it becomes a waste of time writing it in the first place.

Starting a blog at work is more risky than starting one outside of work.

Think long and hard about the consequences before you do so.

Last Modified : May 18th, 2007
Filed under : Tech Writer, SharePoint
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