A useful defensive blogging tool

The Air Force recently released a flow chart describing how to assess blogs that have posted something about the USAF or a subordinate organization ... and help people decide how to respond. The flow chart is quite colorful and written in simple and clear language. It seems to be a pretty useful tool for folks to use. I believe the intent of this flow chart is primarily for organizations to use, but it could be extremely useful for individual Airmen (or as far as this bog is concerned, Soldiers). I won't comment more on the document itself: there are plenty of posts in the blogosphere already discussing its merits and potential problems. A couple of them worth looking at are:

• Global Nerdy
• Web Ink Now one of the comments on this post from Matt Scherer reads: "The problem with the Air Force is that while they have an ongoing social media strategy, they don't have the authorization to get fulltime access to Twitter and other blogs. Their communication types don't want to allow them outside the firewall. A few proactive PA types are now getting a laptop that allows them to see what the world is blogging about, but until this happens, the Air Force is woefully way behind." This is also a problem for the Army and one that needs to be addressed - we need to know what's being written, so we can know what to (or not to) respond to. It's not ever good to be the "last to know"

I do want to highlight the five considerations:

• Transparency - tell folks who you are
• Sourcing - write based on your experience or observations; else clearly cite your sources
• Timeliness - too slow on the draw and your comments will be missed
• Tone - got to remain professional
• Influence - spend your time on "high payoff targets"

I think these are right on the mark ... they match up with guidance issued by LTG Caldwell to his command as well as with the fundamentals of information outlined in public affairs doctrine and link well with strategic communication guidance. All in all, I think this flow chart will serve to be a very useful resource for organizations and individuals as we all find ways to more effectively use new media to engage the public we sworn to protect.

A bit more on defensive blogging

Well, this blog got its first firestorm of comments after I chose to use a recent story to get discussion going about "defensive blogging." The story is about Corps of Engineers employees posting comments on a website about the New Orleans levee system. While most of the comments about my blog entry were about the details of the case - which was not the primary subject of my post - there are several good lessons and highlights that have come out of this experience. I'll summarize them as TTPs for defensive blogging actions.

ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH: NON-NEGOTIABLE. In the comments, New Orleans Ladder said "it is never a good idea for the Army to lie to the American people on American soil with American Tax-paid computers." I couldn't agree more! In my opinion, this is a must - no discussion! Also in the comments, Ms. Rosenthall (posting as WateryHill) wrote in response to a comment by Adam S., "I am just an American citizen, but I do not understand why you say for the Army to fabricate information and call it facts, that the Army is telling 'its side of the story.'" If what was being posted was, in fact, fabricated information, then the person posting it is wrong and is doing more harm than good for their cause and for the Army. Since the idea of defensive blogging is to correct or complete a story then the information a Soldier leaves on anothers blog must be completely accurate. I've written a little about this in the past when discussing credibility and how Soldier's blogging fits in the fundamentals of information.

BE HONEST ABOUT WHO YOU ARE. Also in the comments, Ms. Rosenthall wrote "The commenter 'stevonawlins' is on record saying he does not work for the Corps, meanwhile his comment originated from Corps Headquarters in New Orleans." There appears to be a disconnect in this case - either his claim or the IP address is false. I won't hypothesize here about which it is, because the more important point is that if you are a government employee - Soldier or civilian - and you are posting information about something your organization is involved in, then you owe it to the people to be honest about who you are. This is one of the rules that are followed in CENTCOM's defensive blogging exploits - and it is appreciated and respected by the authors of the blogs being commented on by CENTCOM's team. This is also what I've done when leaving comments on others blogs, and what Ms. Rosenthall did when leaving comments on this blog. Of course, there may be some security risks that are being taken by exposing your identity on-line, but, as Mike's 25 axioms for blogging points out, there are ways to protect yourself by carefully choosing what you write about.

ENGAGE THE ISSUES, NOT THE PEOPLE. Some people may like the personal bashing that is not uncommon in the blogosphere, but for professional discussions it should remain professional. And one very common rule for professional debate is to engage the issues, not the people. For example, New Orleans Ladder wrote in the comments, "blog etiquette dictates a civil response to a civil question from a post's subject." He's right; he asked me to address the issue raised by Ms. Rosenthall without attacking me. When one side decides to begin bashing the other, the discussion can quickly degenerate into something that is completely useless. By engaging the issues real discussion occurs and, hopefully, solutions are found. As Soldiers in the blogosphere, much like when we're visiting with friends or family or walking around town, we leave perceptions about us as individuals and people often generalize about all Soldiers from those perceptions that we create. We must take advantage of the opportunity for people to see that we are professionals - just as they can see in the accomplishment of the missions we are assigned. This may be a bit of a challenge, especially if you choose to leave comments on a website that is clearly anti-military or has engaged in hateful rhetoric, but we must always remain professional, even when we disagree with someone's ideas or opinions.

These three TTPs should be simple for us to follow. I'm interested to hear from those of you that may have engaged in a defensive blogging mission. Share your experiences in the comments to this post. Thanks!

P.S. for a great example of effective defensive blogging, take the time to read the comments to my original post on this subject. Ms. Rosenthall and others were effective at ensuring I had the complete and correct story, they were primarily professional in tone, and they were clearly passionate about the subject. It's just one more example of the power of back-and-forth that can occur in this new media.

Toward more guidance Soldiers could use ...

Thanks to the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog for pointing me towards a couple interesting pieces about corporate blogs. While the comments on the posts are geared toward the civilian world and "official" blogs, the suggestions are really appropriate to anyone blogging. In this case, I think they should certainly be included in any training for Soldiers who are interested in entering the blogosphere.

The first post is on thenextweb.com which stated, first, that only 1 in 6 people find corporate blogs trustworthy. I'll ask some more questions about perceptions toward official military blogs some other time. For the time being, suffice it to say that this, at its roots, is a problem with credibility! So, how then do the authors suggest we can improve this? Consider this comment about corporate (i.e. produced by the PR department) blogs:

the pieces of personal PR are often isolated, living a life within the .com domain of the company. No outgoing trackbacks, social media presence, or articles about phenomena outside the safe haven of the offices.

Turn this around and there are several suggestions for authors to consider:

• don't link just to your own blog or others in your "world" - in other words, use variety
• allow and show trackbacks - it allows your readers to follow tangents of your stories
• have variety in your posts - something beyond the "safe haven" of Soldiering? Okay, the analogy doesn't fit, but the idea still does ... keep variety in your topics

Another bit from this post that is worth commenting on is:

Teach a PR person the fine art of community management 2.0. Give him a free pass for Twittering, Digging, Stumbling, and blogging all the day

Replace "PR person" with "Soldier" and you've got a good suggestion applicable to this project. Again, perhaps its a bit of a stretch to apply this completely to Soldiers - I'm certainly not advocating allowing them to blog all day! Nor am I convinced of the usefulness of Twitter from the "war for public opinion" perspective. But, the most important part of that quote is "teach" - in order to help many of our Soldiers be effective bloggers, we need to teach them about it. I'm still working on ideas for how best to do this education thing ... more to follow on that subject.

The final bit of that short post (I believe these comments my be longer than the original post, but anyway ...) that is worth highlighting is:

Oh, and don’t forget to have a look at some fine examples

This is nothing new. It's been mentioned on this very blog by Tristan_Abbey:

I would recommend training by example: put together a portfolio of half a dozen pieces posted by folks like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal, and others. This way the soldiers can see what effective blog posts look like, how they are written, and what kind of content they contain.

The other post linked from CGB is to Web Strategy by Jeremiah which discusses various attributes of the best blogs. I found these to be not earth-shattering, but written well, simply, and applicable to guidance that can eventually be put in the hands of Soldier bloggers, so I'll reprint them (edited) here. For the full list and a way to diagnose your blog as "great", "good", or "horrible" check out Jeremiah's original post.

1. Writing style: Written in a human voice
2. Topics: Discusses the lifestyle (or workstyle) of actual customers
3. Humility: Admits when wrong and discusses in open the short comings of the company and product and demonstrates in public how it will be improved
4. Linking Behavior: Links out to other sources, even competitors or critics as well as the next listed
5. Customer Inclusion: Allows for customers to guest blog, or includes snippets of their experiences
6. Dialog: Comments enabled and published instantly
7. Comment Moderation: Comments (other than spam or off topic) are allowed, including direct disagreements
8. Frequency:While more isn’t always better, having a steady rhythm of content is important

Obviously, that list is tailored for folks in the business world, not in the military. Regardless, the ideas still apply. I found items 1 and 2 to be exactly what many of you have said attracts you to milblogs - they're written by, and in the voice of, a Soldier on patrol and they contain personal stories you won't read anywhere else. Words like product and customers could easily be replaced with mission and public and the suggestion would apply to a Soldier.

On the topic of useful tips for effective blogging, you may also want to take a look at:

• 7 essential tips
• ID's 6 Commandments
• Mike's axioms for blogging

One of the main products that I intend to produce from this project is a one or two page "smart sheet" that would be aimed at helping a Soldier enter the blogosphere for the first time and begin to tell his or her story. Any other ideas that you have for things that should (or should not!) be included on such a product, please leave them here. Also, if you've come across (or created!) any useful lists of dos and donts of blogging or ways to increase interest and readership in a blog, those would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks!