Dana VanDen Heuvel: Is Blogging a Skill or Talent?

June 15, 2004

Is Blogging a Skill or Talent?

Heather at Microsoft posed the question today on what it will take for (corporate) blogging to become a job skill. Interesting, when you think about it. I think that it will follow suit with things like "Internet Marketing" and other new-age ventures. However, what is blogging, in the corporate sense. Does updating project weblogs count? Anyone can do that (is corporate e-mailing a skill?). Or, are we talking about projecting your company's voice into the world?

Heather has the following to say about the skills required:

A gage (or gauge) for relevance.

Strong written communication skills.

An internal filter. Part relevance, part business smarts.

Have original opinions or read a lot of other blogs and have opinions on them.

Know how to argue diplomatically. (John Cass and I figured this one out early on...)

I would add....

An open mind - You have to be able to see a topic from multiple frames of reference and be open to ideas that are from other 'paradigms.'

A willingness to share - Blogging involves giving to get. If you're not ready to share information and ideas, you're really not adding any value out here.

While I am not a journalist or PR person per se, the points you mention above are all things think of when writing press releases to be read by journalists, and when I'm writing articles, and, of course, when I'm writing on my weblog.

I think that relevance and filtering are your most important, and are the things that get people back to your site. I will assume that most bloggers can write, or are trying to improve (as is my case) because they have expended the energy, and that they have an opinion (originality, I think is part absolute, and part frame-of-reference).

That being said, think of the people you know in your company or department. How many would you say 'know the voice of your organization' enough to 'blog' about it? I would argue that very few have it.

Now comes the question. Is blogging a skill, or a talent? :)