Schwartz’s reaction was to publicly apologise to Mullenweg and ask if there was a second chance to get things right. Very shortly, they were having breakfast together. Is this what happens to everyone who has something negative to say about Sun? No! This is what happens when an influential blogger, innovative developer, and entreprenuer says it.

Schwartz’s reputation, and Sun’s, would have notched up a few points after this, and deservedly. There was acknowledgement of the issue, an apology and recognition that here was someone whose opinions should be listened to.

I liked what Toby had to say and delved a little more into her site. She is a consultant for social media marketing strategy believing that to be effective a social media strategy has to be included into a marketing plan. But before this happens you really need to see if the organisation is ready for a more open communication between it and its customers and stakeholders.

As well as whether the culture of the organisation is ready for blogging, consider the fit to the marketing and business goals. If this is looking positive, then start planning for a corporate blog. In this process establish the goals and objectives, the target audience, the type of blog, content, guidelines, amongst other items.

Other major components are the training requirements in writing a blog and in building relationships, planning the launch, and evaluating the results. See Toby’s post on Blog Report Card for some criteria for evaluating blogs.

It looks at the difference between a blog and a website, that its an additional communication channel and not a replacement for press releases, e-newsletters etc. It discusses what makes a good corporate blog, legal issues, employee blogs and resources needed. Weil also provides a list of corporate blogs from large to small organisations. And a list of some good CEO blogs (in her opinion) – Matt Blumberg, Karen Christensen, and Alan Meckler, amongst others.

Weil provides some resources and links to other sites, including Business Blog Consulting which has a number of contributors. The last couple of posts on the site were about responding to negative comments – always handy to know ways to do it well – and what to blog and not to blog from a legal point of view.

About responding to negative comments – I have to say that in the last couple of days I’ve noticed some bloggers responding to what they see as unfair or untrue comments made about them by other bloggers. One blogger even commented that blogging would not survive if people were not being truthful. Given the evolving nature of blogs – we’ll watch this space.

The resources section also has a link to a wiki listing corporate blogs from around the world. There is one listing from Australia which I checked out but wasn’t certain who was blogging, couldn’t help noticing the typos, and thought it would be a good blog to review.

Weil offers consulting in business blogging via BlogWrite for CEOs and podcasts weekly. This supports her views on why you should blog. One of the reasons according to Weil is to contribute to thought leadership. Thought leadership? This means writing on the topic related to your industry in an expert way showing you have something to say and saying it well.

Have fun browsing on the sites discussed!

There are internal and external corporate blogs. Internal blogs tend to be used to provide information or for project management to improve internal communication. External blogs communicate information about products, services, and events as a way to establish closer contacts with customers and to get feedback from customers.

Given the number of bloggers and the variety of topics blogged about, it is worthwhile looking at whether your company and it’s products and services, or your industry, are the focus of blogs.

You can do this using free blog search engines, such as Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Blogpulse (a service provided by Neilsen BuzzMetrics). You can see what your competitors, customers, employees are saying, helping you stay in touch and respond very quickly and very easily with what’s happening.

Corporate blogs contain a mix of information ranging from opinion, information about products or services, and perhaps commenting and responding on popular or unpopular aspects of the company or its products.

Having a set of blogging guidelines is recommended. Yahoo have posted guidelines as well as BBC staff. In 2005, IBM guidelines about blogging were published. This is the less formal version which had some useful reader comments about providing personal information and letting the world know you’re on holidays.

Dell outlines some ‘rules for engagement’ . I also like what Jeremy Pepper says in his “About Blog” and “Comments Policy” clearly outlining to his readers about his opinions and changes to posts, as well as expectations of reader’s comments.

It is expected that bloggers follow a code of ethics which include telling the truth, being accurate, noting mistakes and showing where changes have been made to posts, and not deleting posts. Comments should be addressed respectively, and any conflicts of interests need to be acknowledged.

Blogging guidelines provide you with information about legal issues, that is, the things you don’t or shouldn’t be saying about financial information, trade secrets. They’ll also talk about avoiding issues with copyright, libel and privacy.

Some authors allow you to post content from their papers or sites as long as you acknowledge the authors under the Creative Commons agreement .

So at least one of your posts for the assignment will be on blogging guidelines – appropriate content, legal issues, ethics.