Power of the Third Voice
I'm please to send some love out to Peter Caputa who's now doing some side work with the Root.net folks. As he recently announced, he's been added to the team as a contract employee to handle some of the blogging responsibilities for the main company blog. As a starving entrepreneur, I'm happy and can certainly relate. Pete's an ideal person to do this, his summary explains it all:
They intend to use blogs and a lot of other creative ways to engage their community. And engaging their community will be quintessential to making this all work. Without consumers as an active participant in heralding their own rights to own their own attention, this won't work. So, my goal is to help foster that community. And in doing so, change the way advertisers, publishers, middlemen and investors (that's new) interact with us individuals, who just so happen to consume stuff.
I've been especially interested in this Third Voice model as it's an integral part of our offering at syncPEOPLE. I alluded to some of these issues in "Fear of Commitment & Comments". One thing I have spent quite a bit of time on lately is connecting bloggers to our clients. I like to call this the Third Voice since it's really a voice from outside the organization. This is worrisome to many, for just that reason, but on the flip side they see the value in a new perspective, especially one that's driven by passion (did I mention our company's tagline; Connecting People, Passions and Pursuits).
What resonated with me about Pete's new role is his acknowledgement of passion from both parties. He wasn't hired just for writing skills or because he has loads of free time on his hands - he loves what they're doing and they see the value in that. I'm not alone in this line of thinking. As usual, if you know where to look, or more importantly, how to look, you'll find someone talking about what your thinking. For me, that voice came from Pat McCarthy's comments on Pete's new job:
This is interesting because there are many employees at Root.net who have their own blogs already, so it’s not like they don’t feel they could handle it on their own. They are specifically choosing an outside party.
What kind of effect will this have? Will the blog be more or less insightful because of it? It should definitely feel different from a normal corporate blog, but will people who become blog readers later on understand that the writer is not an actual employee of the company?
Source: Conversion Rater, "Hiring an Outside Blogger For Your Corporate Blog"
In response, I think the outcome can be quite positive. Naturally, a good selection process needs to be used in choosing the right blogger - it's a lot like dating in many ways. In the end, blending viewpoints and capturing the conversation really do lend themselves to interesting experiences.