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Katie: Welcome back to Chapter Three of the BusinessMakers Overtime Show. Esther and I have had quite a show already talking about Game Boy merit badges for the Boy Scouts, hoop dancing hippies and now we're onto blogging. I feel like this is my show.
Esther: This is so up your alley, this show.
Katie: I love all this stuff.
Esther: I know.
Katie: Absolutely love it. So let's talk about blogging and not just blogging for business as a business owner, but actually dealing with employees that have their own voices that you do not control out there in the blogosphere. It's a scary thing.
Esther: It is a scary thing, especially for major conglomerates and for small businesses, but mostly for companies that keep things close to the vest. I think it really makes a difference when you have a lot of things in development and a lot of things that are kind of secret or a lot of investors. You're a public company; there are things that cannot get out before you're ready to release them.
Katie: Exactly; and I mean and even bloggers and employees with the best intentions. Like they are human and sometimes they're so passionately excited about what they're working on, what they're talking about in the office all day that I mean, ya' never know. Something may slip out and I know that that would just petrify me, even as a marketing girl, but as a business owner. Hello.
Esther: I mean there's a lot of talk about the open brand and about being transparent and I appreciate all of those things. I think you should be open. You should be transparent, but only to a certain degree.
Katie: Yes.
Esther: I think you still have to kind of keep things in perspective that not everything is everybody's business. Just because you wanna know doesn't mean you get to know if you're a consumer.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: I think that it's the only way to really fully develop something. You don't want people to know about it before it's out there in the world -
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: We're reading a great blog. I think - was it Ink.com? Is that right?
Katie: Mhmm; on Ink.com.
Esther: And they were mentioning about how a Google employee was fired almost the day he was hired because he started a blog about working at Google and never kind of consulted with Google about whether or not that was okay and ya' know, they were right. I mean I don't know if they were right to fire him. They could've just asked him to shut the blog down.
Katie: Exactly. After one day -
Esther: Yeah; I mean it wasn't like he was telling trade secrets, but maybe they just saw something in him that was maybe a security risk or -
Katie: Sure.
Esther: Who knows, but you have those people. There are just some people who don't have the where-with-all to not share some things that you wouldn't want shared.
Katie: It's the filters.
Esther: The filters.
Katie: And there are also the guys or women, guys or gals that you go out to happy hour with with the office that half a Bud Light later it's like, ‘Shh, shh.'
Esther: Yeah.
Katie: ‘Shut your mouth.'
Esther: Yeah; exactly.
Katie: So filters can be in any sort of communication medium, quite necessary.
Esther: It's a skill and some people have to learn it. Some people naturally have one.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: Some people must be trained.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: On how to filter the things that come to their brains.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: Some people never learn.
Katie: I know in the office at Shipel, something that we do that's just popped up more and more in the last year. So during specific company meetings, we'll actually, to kick off a meeting, discuss what part of this meeting of our discussion is Tweetable and bloggable right from the get-go because sometimes our employees hopefully are always our biggest advocates and we want them -
Esther: And you guys have a lot of people who are already active online.
Katie: Ya' know what? We don't really hire people if they are not, if they do not have a personal brand, if they do not have any blogging experience it's very difficult to get a job because -
Esther: Wow.
Katie: -- that's what we do.
Esther: Yeah.
Katie: So here you have and of course we hire as many sort of different kinds of people. Some people are crazy outgoing and like wild and talkative and others are more technical focus, wouldn't ever share anything personal or business related, but I mean we need that variety of people to help us be the most profitable. There's different decisions. There's different ideas, but that also leads to a lot of holy crap moments because everybody treats different situations differently in their own personal space online -
Esther: Right.
Katie: So we have to be like hey, you can say this, but do not talk about this, do not talk about this and still, we still have slip ups where me as a communications director, I have to make that hard phone call or walk down to somebody's desk and be like, ‘Ya' know what? You said this and this. I know you didn't mean to, but you've got to delete it now.'
Esther: Right.
Katie: And it's tough and it makes you feel like a jerk, but I mean this is important.
Esther: It is. This is sort of - I mean it's related, but it's unrelated. There was a piece on tech crunch Michael Arrington wrote. So you know this can't be good.
Katie: Another charming person we talk about occasionally on this show.
Esther: Yeah; well, he wrote something about - basically a long story short is Fortune Magazine contacted him. Someone from their PR team contacted him about a new book that was coming out and said, ‘Would you please talk about this book?' They gave him some excerpts and he did. He wrote the thing. He's like, ‘I'm not gonna get out of it, but I like the guy who's writing the book. It's interesting. This guy's speaking at our conference that's coming up, disrupt, and it's just something good I'll do.' Spent a lot of time on it, posted a bunch of stuff that the guy - excerpts from the book.
Katie: Okay.
Esther: The PR person writes him back almost immediately and it's like, ‘I cannot believe you posted all this stuff. You should have known. You have to take it down. You were only supposed to post excerpts. You weren't supposed to repurpose and post everything that I gave you.' And he of course, posted their entire exchange on Tech Crunch.
Katie: Oh, please.
Esther: But, not only the best part about it was was that the PR person, when she wrote to him, called it a copyright infringement.
Katie: [Gasps]
Esther: And she spelled it C-O-P-Y space -
Katie: Oh no, no, no.
Esther: W-R-I-T-E infringement.
Katie: No.
Esther: Copywrite infringement -
Katie: That makes me wanna punch something.
Esther: I know. So I felt really bad for her in a way ‘cause she was just totally clueless. She was probably an intern or something. I don't know why they put her on this task.
Katie: Honestly.
Esther: But she was freaking out. Then she called him eight times between like 6 a.m. He was asleep. He wrote the thing at like 4 in the morning, went to sleep. He'd been asleep for like two hours. She called him a bunch of times. Called, called, called; finally he answers the phone at like 9:50 and it's this girl's editor and they have words. They have an exchange and he says, ‘The lawyers are gonna' - all this stuff. Just this crazy, crazy thing. So you just never know. You just have to be very specific with people about what you want them to do -
Katie: Oh my gosh.
Esther: -- what you don't want them to do when you're dealing with employees in these very sensitive situations ‘cause once something's on the internet, it is on the internet forever.
Katie: It doesn't go away, but I mean that is a great example because that is not how it should have been treated and just like there are times where I have to be like, ‘Hey, employee that I adore and I know your heart's in the right place, take this down.' Sometimes you can't. There are no take backs and sometimes it's like alright, this is what happened. Here's how we're gonna roll with it. We're gonna make it good by doin' this. We're gonna do this. And Michael Arrington, to have somebody glowing and gushing about a book that's from your client. I mean, that is amazing. Like you just take that and you pet him and you love him -
Esther: Exactly.
Katie: And you just let it go.
Esther: Exactly. It's sad. And he even mentions some of these traditional, what'd he call it, dead tree media.
Katie: Gees.
Esther: Just do things a little backwards sometimes and they keep their content close to the vest and what's gonna happen is soon as the book comes out anyway is half of it's gonna end up on the internet, stolen from other people and repurposed into new books.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: So don't try to protect everything. Don't try to keep everything locked down.
Katie: Yeah.
Esther: You're gonna have to let some of it go. Chris Brogan really talks about that a lot is that giving away your content for free and you'll get a lot back.
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: And I think that's one side of the spectrum, but on the other side of the spectrum it's just to make sure that those things that you really don't wanna get out, don't get out in the first place.
Katie: Exactly. I think people sometimes operate better in like some - if they have rules, if they have not like over imposed crazy, strict, rigid boxes that you try to shove people in, but like something that's been helpful to me is to recognize that people have their personal blogging spaces. I mean, we do not have control as a company over what they write. Like we can't take away their password. We can't shut down their blog ‘cause we're mad at what they said. So like we wanna help them grow that brand, grow that content in whatever direction they need. Whatever we can do to help we're gonna help as long as it's in the right spirit in the general way that we're all going together. But then we also make a big, big deal about giving pretty much everyone on our team access to company communications as well. So if you wanna post something about the company, something you're excited about, here's your opportunity. Here's a very official platform, still feel free to do whatever you want ‘cause if we say, ‘You can't do this. No; this is awful' nobody's gonna write anything, but by giving them that voice, by giving them that direction and the little tweaks that they need sometimes is so valuable.
Esther: I think you're totally right. You give people boundaries. You give people constraints and that actually allows the creativity to increase and flow instead of the opposite. People don't understand, especially in the work place, if you give people too much freedom they don't know what to do.
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: They don't know what direction to go. So you give them certain guidelines and then everything will end up working out in your favor. They'll just start naturally thinking about things they can and can't do -
Katie: Exactly.
Esther: -- based on what you tell them.
Katie: Exactly. And maybe not everybody in your company is a blogger, but maybe you have a potentially amazing podcaster or an awesome video super star in the making, you let them voice whatever it is that they wanna say, however it is that they wanna say it and it can all go through your blog or that general social media hub that you use to direct people to, but just give people a little bit of free rein, but yeah, don't be afraid to occasionally kind of clock ‘em on the head and be hey now.
Esther: That's right.
Katie: Simma' down now; simma' down now.
Esther: Well we're not gonna clock you on the head.
Katie: Never.
Esther: Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. We won't do anything mean to you.
Katie: No; no spankings.
Esther: We want you to come back and listen to us again, but in the meantime why don't you visit us on Facebook. Please don't kill your Facebook account. Or if you want to you can, but just go look at Facebook.com/overtimeshow first and then join the Facebook implosion movement.
Katie: Exactly; and then make your decision or make May 31st like the Overtime Show on Facebook Day. Like I don't know. We could switch this whole thing around.
Esther: That would be awesome. You've been listening to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard hear and online at thebusinessmakers.com/overtime. I'm Esther Steinfeld.
Katie: And I'm Katie Laird.
Esther: And we'll see you next week.
Katie: See ya' later.