The blogosphere is abuzz with the news about Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft. If you don’t know, Robert Scoble is the Microsoft blogger, giving the tech giant a human face on the web. Of course Microsoft being Microsoft, this is not really going to put a huge dent to Channel9, the company’s blog community but Scoble’s name, almost always mentioned in the same breath with Microsoft, got me thinking about blog identity.

For small businesses who have an employee as their ‘face’ of the company, you need to realize that the person who blogs for your company is going to be more influential on your customers than anyone else in the company. It’s not unlike the classic issue of top performing sales people who leave and take the customers with them.

The key blogger is like that sales person. He/She is the front liner, the one who develops that relationship with the customer for you. So, you have to think about this. If you, the owner feels blogging is not for you and you delegate it, consider long term implications. What would happen if your staff blogger leaves the company? Will you lose blog readers and the influence?

One way to safe guard against that is to have a team so the company blog is not necessarily the voice of one person. This also helps you maintain a more balanced representation of your company identity – not the identity of that one person. I also think owners should be part of that team. Sure you have a lot on your plate but this is no different than doing a printed newsletter. If you can write a ‘From the President’ article for your newsletter, you can blog. Besides, blogging is much easier 😉

This post was originally posted on Blogging Starter Pack

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