How to make employees blog? - eNidhi India Travel Blog

How to make employees blog?

This blog has completed 4 years on 22nd May 2010 and taking liberty to give some Gyan...

Many enterprises launch their corporate blog (internal or external) with enthusiasm and great expectations. But soon, generating quality content for the blog will become a challenge, as most of the employees do not care to spend some time and contribute quality article to the blog.

Those who’re responsible for the corporate blog often find it challenging to motivate employees to blog. How to make your staff get involved in company’s social media initiatives? Here are a few practical tips.

How to motivate employees to blog:
1 Start from top down. Encourage CEO and CXOs to blog first.
This will reinstate company’s faith in social media and encourage rest of the staff to get involved. Many of the employees, though willing to blog, hesitate to do so, thinking “My boss would feel I’m wasting time on blog”. When the encouragement comes from top, it works.

2 Get rid of their fears about blogging:
Many hesitate to blog thinking “What if I do a mistake?” “My English is not good” “Who will read what I write”, “I can’t write anything interesting”. These fears, even if true, can be eliminated only when he or she takes the plunge. So explaining how blogging can help them overcome these fears and improve their language and communication might convince them to start experimenting

3 Show them what all can be written
When someone is not a natural writer, he/she will not have an idea what all can be written. For example, a subject matter expert with few decades experience will be super rich with knowledge related to his field, but may need some handholding if he’s to put his wisdom into words.

Similarly an employee can write about his passion, experiences, fiction, poems, family celebrations, travelogues and so on. Demonstrating them how various happenings in life can be effectively shared via blog will make it easier for them to get started

4 Identify lead bloggers/champions in each department
Identify a few enthusiastic bloggers in each department who can motivate rest of the guys to blog. They can also help as mentors, clearing any doubts questions or technical difficulties other staff may face while blogging.

5 Incentives and Encouragement
When an employee spends quality time in contributing quality article for the blog, his efforts and contribution needs to be recognized appropriately. Appreciation could be as simple as featuring him/her prominently on the blog (say as blogger of the week) or some other financial and non financial incentives

This element is critical because quality of corporate blog will be diluted if time consuming high quality content is treated at par with another post sourced from an email forward

6 Get good readership at the blog
If there’re good number of readers visiting the blog and blog posts get good no of comments, quality writers will naturally be attracted to the blog. Securing good readership for corporate blog warrants another post on its own, but in brief, it can be achieved by planned promotions, effective corporate communication on blogs & its advantages, friendly design and quality contents.

28 comments:

  1. Interesting observation and a nice list of points. Hope those in the corporate communications read this article :)

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  2. Interesting! I think the corporate should promote blogging in a big way! It would result in good, constructive output!

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  3. Thanks Mohan

    Karan, yes. Majority of the executives still think blogging is waste of time

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  4. Congrats on Completing 4years. If it was not you, I wouldn't have know about Time Shares

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  5. Nice tips. Congrats on 5th year of blogging.

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  6. Gr8888 Sri....i have been reading ur blogs since our "xpert blogger" days....infact i got boosted to blog just to win the "Top Blogger of the Week".

    Happy Blogging and look fwd to read many such wonderful blogs from u in teh years to come...

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  7. Thanks SR Sir

    Vamsi,

    Thanks Buddy. Its the support and encouragement from readers that keeps a blogger going...

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  8. There was something like this initiated in the office but was later snubbed due to lack of interest which was because the CEOs would dictate what to write and what not to! sigh. A liberal outlook could definitely promote a better blogging experience :)

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  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  11. I think its a wonderful idea if a company promotes blogging within its staff and if that is a multi-blog it would even be terrific. Just like an online community for the company's employees. Thanks such a nice write-up.

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  12. Liked you post, trying to motivate my employee to blog; my name is on the top of the list :) thanks

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  13. Many bloggers are anonymous when they blog, working for corporates has its sideeffects, anything defaming, insulting etc will be taken seriously. So i don t know how far it is prudent

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  14. Nice post I would even like to read why should employees blog? If the why is clear. The how will be discovered by itself !

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  15. Loganathan: Thanks for the information. will check it out

    Himanshu: Why is another question altogether...

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  16. good and valid points, i shall take few of ur points and highlight your work in my network

    Thank u again

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  17. Arvind, please include credit and a link

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  18. Do you think my manager would have encouraged his subordinates to start a blog? Visit my blog http://mybussinesstravail.blogspot.com/ and give your opinion if you find time to visit.

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  19. Nandagopal:
    I've read your blog and commented. keep writing

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  20. Nice post about employees blog. Really great.Well done.

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