Intellectual Property And The Corporate Blog
January 22, 2007
The recent Edelman study, “New Frontiers in Employee Communications” had a paragraph on company content retention when an employee leaves, here's the snippet from the study:
“Another significant benefit of adopting these tools internally is that the organization then has ownership of all the intellectual property produced through the communications. When former Microsoft employee and popular blogger Robert Scoble left the company earlier this year, he took his site, which is run through the blog platform WordPress and read by thousands of people each day, with him. If employees use tools outside of the organization, then information housed there is tied to the worker and will be lost if that individual leaves.”
Robert Scoble is one of many people who have left their former employer taking their blog intact with them; another famous example is Steve Rubel who writes Micro Persuasion and now works for Edelman. Steve still blogs at his own blog.
I believe that employees will increasingly want to keep their blogs personal even if they write about business and professional issues. In fact I think as a person becomes more aware of Internet and web technology the benefits of managing and controlling your own content become more apparent to the individual. Though a countervailing pull is that as someone becomes more entrenched in a technology or social media group it becomes more difficult to leave.
In the case of Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble, I suspect both of their current employers were happy that both individuals were ran their own blogs and could take their content and personal brands with them when they left their old respective companies.
There is difference between writing on a multiple author corporate blog for a company and writing your own blog while working for a company. It is a delicate balance between personal branding and a company brand gaining credibility from a well-known personality. Both Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel were no doubt hired in part by their current employers because of the credibility and respect the hire would engender for the companies they both work for now.
Though in the case of Edelman, recent scandals might be harming Steve's reputation more than Steve Rubel helps to add to Edelman’s credibility. Many people understand rationally that Steve cannot be responsible for every Edelman action but his personal brand has such influence in the PR community there must have been some negative affect to his personal brand. In relation to the Edelman study, I think Steve Rubel’s personal site, the continuity rather than being absorbed into an Edelman corporate blog, adds to the Edelman brand in the area of social media.
While with Robert Scoble, the Scobleizer blog’s credibility when Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft came in part because he ran his own personal blog. Therefore I’d like carefully when hiring an existing blogger, if you want them to blog on your domain name. But if you are starting personal corporate blogs for your employees unless you have a multiple author blog, once you lose the blogger, the relevancy of the blog fades.