Blogging is personal. At least it’s always been that way for me. It doesn’t matter if I’m blogging for myself or for a company, I always want the words I write to be true. I want them to be unbiased and genuine. I want to give readers a small piece of myself with each post I write. Because that’s what I think good blogging is about. It’s about revealing yourself to build a point and to give people something to take with them. However, if you’re a corporate blogger, blogging also means not getting fired.

One of the biggest struggles any corporate blogger will face is balancing their need for authenticity with an employers need to get out the company message. You want to start important conversations and inspire change, while your employer wants you to talk about the training they have going on next month or to promote their way of doing things. To be a good corporate blogger, you’re going to have to find a way to do both.

To me, corporate blogging has always been a mix of knowing when to let a good story pass by for the greater good, how to blend your objectives with your company‘s, and when you need to forget all that and fight for what you know is right. Here are some of the lessons that have helped me along the way.

Know how far you’re allowed to go…BEFORE you go there

Let’s just get this part over with. In a perfect world, you’d be able to blog about whatever you wanted, however you wanted and get paid for it. However, that doesn’t really work when you’re writing on behalf of someone else. Know the rules before you start playing. This means having a conversation with your boss right off the bat and laying a few things out on the table. You’ll want to discuss:

• What does everyone want the blog to be?
• What subjects are off limits?
• How controversial can you be?
• Who are you absolutely not allowed to piss off (…and can you get around it)?
• What tone is appropriate and how far can you go?
• How much discretion do you have for handling situations?

create your
rulebook
before you
ever start playingEssentially, you want to create your rulebook before you ever start playing. If you have an insatiable need to cause trouble in the blogosphere and all your boss wants you to do is to make nice and spout canned answers, then you’re going to have to work a lot harder to be true to yourself. Maybe this is something you’re willing to do and maybe it’s not. However, coming from personal experience, I can tell you that it’s always better to have these conversations before the damage is done, not after. At least that way when the fire breaks out you can pretend you did it on purpose.

Don’t lose yourself in the brand

Good corporate blogging means you have to be as much yourself as possible, even if you are wearing someone else’s jersey. If I could go back in time, this is a point I’d want to really stress with people. That while it’s their name on the blog, it’s my voice that’s going to make or break it. A corporate blog has nothing to do with the brand it’s sitting on. It banks solely on the credibility, authenticity and the power of the blogger to draw people in and make them feel part of a community. And you can’t do that playing a character or at half mast. You need to be granted the freedom (and the trust) to be yourself, because people will be able to see through it if you’re not.

My last post for Search Engine People was about the importance of bringing your voice to blog. It detailed what to consider, how to find it and how you need to hold on to it like hell with everything you have. I argued that your voice is the most important thing you have as a blogger. And I hold true to that.

Unfortunately, a lot of employers don’t buy it. They think the blog is about them. It’s about the brand and promoting the brand in each post. They don’t understand that the blog is actually about the readers. It’s about giving them something to hold on to, to relate to and to fall in love with. It’s about creating a community, not an audience. And you can’t make someone fall in love with you if you’re trying to be someone else. Most of us learned that in high school. (Okay, maybe only a handful of us really learned it.)

Blogging with authenticity means giving your readers part of yourself. It’s about showing up every day and taking the hard stands that expose a little bit of who you are. It’s about being vulnerable without being frail. The thing that’s always attracted me to blogging is the rawness. Sure, making money is nice, but having the ability to say whatever it is I want to say, how I want to say it, is incredible. That’s how you establish trust and create a blog that’s worth reading. There’s where the authenticity lies.

Known when to fight…and when to concede

One of the most important things you’ll need to learn as a corporate blogger is how to pick your battles. You can’t be a crusader all the time. At some point you will be asked (read: ordered) to scrap a post that you believe in. There will be times when you’ll have to sit on a story that may put your company in a less than flattering light. Or you’ll have to shut up when someone throws a grenade in your direction. And it’s hard. I know. And the only way to conquer these moments is to shove your entire first in your mouth and bite down. Hard. Otherwise, you’ll either get fired for hurting the company when you mouth off or you’ll lose a bit of yourself as you try to talk around issues and cover them in a way that’s not authentic.

However, there will also be times when you’ll need to fight. When you’ll have to summon that crusader and fight for the posts that are important to you. Never be afraid to do this. If you live your life scared to challenge the system, you won’t grow. And neither will your blog. You become predictable, boring, and people will stop caring.

Something to keep in mind (and keep you employed…), when you’re fighting for a post, you want to present the pros of publishing in a language your boss will understand. He/She doesn’t care about your moral integrity, your need to be right or your voice as a blogger. Your boss cares about page views, media mentions, and links. Show them how fighting will give them that. Often “fighting” is really about having that heart to heart conversation with your boss, showing them how the post will help them and asking them to trust you. There’s power in those conversations.

Being an authentic corporate blogger means finding a way to balance your voice with the goals of the company you‘re representing. It can be a bit of a balancing act in the beginning, but as time goes on, and you and your employer both start to trust your instincts, things will fall into a place and a rhythm will develop.

I’ve done my best to never edit what Lisa believes in any of my writing. Sometimes I’ve had to tone down language or presents multiple sides, but I’ve always tried to give readers a piece of me in each of my posts. And that, to me, is the heart of being an authentic corporate blogger. You can do it. You just have to fight for it.

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., and Internet marketing company specializing in SEO consulting, social media and online reputation management services. You can find Lisa on Twitter at @lisabarone or catch her blogging daily on Outspoken's Internet marketing blog.

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4 insightful comments

I've struggled with this new position I'm in to write a blog post every month. This is great helpful info. It really confirms ideas I've had about corporate blogging. Thanks for the thoughts.

David Scoville  ^#

Great advice. I'm currently in a situations where I'm blogging for someone, and I spend way to much time wondering if I'm crossing any lines with my posts. We definitely should have had a conversation before hand about these items.

Cool Gifts  ^#

I also recently started a corporate blog and have been thinking about and dealing with these exact issues. I completely agree that your voice is the most important part of a blog… if people want corporate jargon, they can check out the corporate website! One thing that really helped me was getting a clear understanding of my boss's (and her boss's) goals and expectations. Knowing those made it easier to pick my battles… and made it easier to structure my time, voice and content in a way that avoids battles altogether.

Alena  ^#

We need to grow corporate bloggers. I need to seek out our key story holders and train them to be able to tell the story of their departments in an authentic and genuine fashion to the public at large. Could you recommend how we could train our people to become effective corporate story tellers?

Denis  ^#