EBlog
The debate continues: policy then blog, or blog then policy?
October 9, 2007 | Posted by: Christine
The Marketing Profs B2B Forum has generated many wonderful tidbits of information and several thought provoking questions. Such as this one: do you set policy for your blog first or start blogging and evolve your policies?
To be sure there is not one right answer. Christine Whittemore wrote a blog post following up on the presentation of this topic at the MP event. She argues for creativity first…policy sometime later.
She says social media must be experienced first hand and then perfected over time, it has to be figured out. I agree.
She also references a social media newsroom built on blogging software - she attributes the creativity of this newsroom to a willingness to experiment and explore.
I don’t know if I feel particularly creative in my posts so far, but I’m enjoying the freedom to post without worrying about policies and procedures.
What do you guys think?
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Comments
by Nicholas
I agree 100%. Rules = restrictions, especially for new blogs. It’s the ultimate realization of “content is king.” Let your writers and your readers figure out what is best for the blog in their participation in it. Necessary policies will present themselves over time. This results in the smallest number of policies and just ones that are the most relevant and needed.
A year and a half ago, I started an online community (that shall remain nameless) that is now almost 500 members strong. The only rule at the start: “Be nice.” So far, that’s still the only rule we have, and the site is regularly touted by its members as the single most positive and “flame-free” discussion forum they’ve ever been apart of.
I have to think that if we had started off with hundreds of lines of rules, restrictions, and legalese (a common occurrence when signing up for most discussion forums and something that no one reads anyway) the site wouldn’t be the great community it is today.