Cubicle controversies

There are innumerable blogs online that about how to blog. I was just reading through one such blog and amidst all familiar information I came across this interesting little bullet point.

According to the blogger, instigating some sort of controversies on your blog page improves readership. Does it really?

Although the blogger was talking in a very general sense, I think this advice is more suitable for personal blogs than corporate blogs. On corporate blog sites you can’t in any way afford to offend the reader. If you go through corporate blog sites, you find that disagreements are rare. Or more appropriately, as often happens on our site, disagreements are understated. And actually, they are not even very serious disagreements.

A corporate blog site has a purpose that goes beyond the written word. And as much it may work, such a tactic could just as well backfire. You may end up losing readership, because often readers get put off by such things. So is it worth the risk?

I would say one has to be really discerning when deciding to employ such a tactic, and do not use it just for the sake of it. If you have a point that may incite emotions and reactions, go ahead and make it in a way that makes people think.

But when I first read that bit about generating controversies, I imagined a corporate blog site that indulged in talking about all the office politics. Wouldn’t that be some fun?