The Sloan blog about blogs

1. Think of relevant things with which to fill themselves.
2. Set and manage standards so they remain consistent and relevant.
3. Completely free you from someone who is comfortable with technology.*
4. Help you take good pictures.
5. Convince your customers that you are the best thing since sliced bread… only your products and services can do that.

*The hours you pay these folks for may be to 2 from 20 for setting up a typical site. That can mean thousands of dollars.

Consistency of focus, quality, pace, and style across your organization will be crucial for the long-term success of your blog-based web site.

The editorial board should include:

1. Someone from top leadership - to drive the process, have final say on style and content issues, and to ensure the blog content supports the strategic direction of the organization.

2. Your most vocal evangelists (or sales people) from within the organization.

3. Your most persnickety grammar and punctuation person.

4. Ideally, a user or customer… someone from the group of folks you hope will be reading your pages.

This group should meet weekly in the beginning, and probably twice per month once things are really rolling smoothly, to:

1. Discuss the upcoming content - ideas, tone, etc.

2. Review the content posted since the last meeting for - style, tone, alignment with goals, interests of the reader, etc, etc.

This group will become a social unit with it’s own normative forces… ie. Everyone will know what’s expected, what’s OK and what’s not, etc. Groups naturally cohere, so policing will not be top-down, but self-generated simply by having the review process in place.