The Porous Membrane: Why Corporate Blogging Works.

[First published in 2005. I thought it could use another airing etc.]

The other day some­body asked me to explain why cor­po­rate blog­ging works. Sure, we know it’s the hot new thing and peo­ple are paying atten­tion to it (inc­lu­ding big media)…but why? Why does it work? Seriously.So I drew the dia­gram above.

1. In Clue­train par­lance, we say “mar­kets are con­ver­sa­tions”. So the dia­gram above repre­sents your mar­ket, or “The Con­ver­sa­tion”. That is demar­ka­ted by the outer circle “y”.

2. There is a sma­ller, inner circle “x”.

3. So the entire mar­ket, the “con­ver­sa­tion” is sepe­ra­ted into two dis­tinct parts, the inner area “A” and the outer area “B”.

4. Area “A” repre­sents your com­pany, the peo­ple suppl­ying the mar­ket. We call that “The Inter­nal Conversation”.

5. Area “B” repre­sents the peo­ple in the mar­ket who are not making, but buying. Other­wise know as the cus­to­mers. We call that “The Exter­nal Conversation”.

6. So each mar­ket from a cor­po­rate point of view has an inter­nal and exter­nal con­ver­sa­tion. What sepe­ra­tes the two is a mem­brane, other­wise known as “x”.

7. Every company’s mem­brane is dif­fe­rent, and con­tro­lled by a host of dif­fe­rent tech­ni­cal and cul­tu­ral factors.

8. Ideally, you want A and B to be iden­ti­cal as pos­si­ble, or at least, in sync. The things that A is pas­sio­nate about, B should also be pas­sio­nate about. This we call “align­ment”. A good exam­ple would be Apple. The peo­ple at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their cus­to­mers. They are aligned.

9. When A and B are no lon­ger alig­ned is when the com­pany starts get­ting into trou­ble. When A starts saying their gizmo is great and B is telling every­body it sucks, then you have serious misalignment.

10. So how do you keep misa­lign­ment from happening?

11. The ans­wer lies in “x”, the mem­brane that sepe­ra­tes A from B. The more porous the mem­brane, the easier it is for con­ver­sa­tions bet­ween A and B, the inter­nal and exter­nal, to hap­pen. The easier for the con­ver­sa­tions on both side of mem­brane “x” to adjust to the other, to become like the other.

12. And nothing, and I do mean nothing, pokes holes in the mem­brane bet­ter than blogs. You want porous? You got porous. Blogs punch holes in mem­bra­nes like like it was Swiss cheese.

13. The more porous your mem­brane (“x”), the easier it is for the inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion to inform and align with the exter­nal con­ver­sa­tion, and vice versa.

14. Not to men­tion it makes misa­lign­ment, if it hap­pens, a lot easier to repair.

15. Of course this begs the ques­tion, why have a mem­brane “x” at all? Why bother with such a hie­rarchy? But that’s another story.

N.B. And yes, this works with inter­nal blogs as well, poking holes in the mem­bra­nes that sepe­rate peo­ple within a cor­po­rate cul­ture; alig­ning “the con­ver­sa­tion” inter­nally etc.The other advan­tage of inter­nal blog­ging is that it orga­ni­ses con­ver­sa­tion into a long-term mana­gea­ble form. Two peo­ple sha­ring ideas via blogs is a lot more per­ma­nent, viral and use­ful for the com­pany than two peo­ple sha­ring the same infor­ma­tion over by the watercooler.

Poking holes in mem­bra­nes sub­verts hie­rarchies. Avast, ye scur­vies etc.

[AFTERTHOUGHTS, JUNE, 2011:]

1. It’s six years later, so when I say “blog­ging”, feel free to add other forms of social media to the mix– Twit­ter, Face­book, Fours­quare etc…

2. The big play in cor­po­rate blog­ging is not eye­balls, it’s ALIGNMENT and CULTURE. Align­ment pre­ce­des eye­balls, not the other way around. Medi­tate on this.

3. A cor­po­rate blog needs two things: i. It needs to be writ­ten by some­body who ACTUALLY knows how to write and ii. is not afraid of get­ting fired. Good luck fin­ding that per­son etc.

4. Read this exce­llent post by Sarah Dopp, “Can I have a wit­ness?”, where she kinda asks her­self the age-old ques­tion, what is blog­ging ACTUALLY for? Something that needs to keep on being asked, and asked again. Espe­cially now, with the  tedious “Game-ification of Everything” trend that is currently sprea­ding everywhere Zzzzzzzzzz…