Scoble et al. are thinking about Corporate Blogging Best Practices. This may seem like splitting hairs, but I’d start by changing the name. There are plenty of channels for the corporate voice, I don’t think that weblogs should be one of them. I value weblogs for their personal viewpoint. I think that Employee Blog maintains that connotation while Corporate Blog loses it.

I would also suggest that all weblogs have an strong industry focus. James Robertson’s Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants is a great site for Cincom Smalltalk. But it’s core focus is Smalltalk, not Cincom. For example, the appropriate industry focus for writing about .NET might be application development; or the industry focus for writing about Word might be office suites. I think that the act of defining the focus establishes both a useful corporate boundary and a meaningful scope.

The industry focus is especially important for executives. There are too many obstacles to plain talk about their own companies. Obstacles that are more easily navigated when talking about the industry. The Blog Maverick is popular CEO blog. And at it’s core, I’d say that it’s much more about the NBA than it is about the Mavericks.