360DigitalInfluence

And even more from BlogHer Business Conference…

Microsoft, one of our fellow BlogHer Business sponsors, has over 3,000 employee bloggers.   Microsoft encourages their employees to use their blogs as a way to connect with the company’s key stakeholders - customers, potential employees, developers, vendors, etc. etc. etc.

The speakers on the panel:

• Sara Ford - Involved with Microsoft’s open source community (Blogging since 2003)
• Ariel Stallings - Marketing Manager working with Staffing, marketing Microsoft as a place to work.   Profiles Microsoft’s employees - of which there are over 80,000. (Blogging since 2000)
• Ani Babaian - Senior Project Manager with Life Search, involved with IT Girls Guides

Some key points made by the panelists:

• No one wants to hear about Microsoft’s “benefits”, they want to hear about the people, behind the scenes news and real work that’s being done by real people.
• Share what you feel comfortable sharing as an employee, and a blogger (Sara shared, “no politics, no religion, and no venting there is a place for that, it’s called Facebook.”)
• Blogging is a great opportunity to reach groups of people that might share an affinity with a particular employee - but not the company as a whole - and shape some new perceptions.

Overall, there is a lot to be gained by having employees actively engaged on blogs - be it a corporate blog or their own.