Corporate blogging is the subject of many books, untold thousands of blog posts, and much overall chatter. How open is too open? Where do you draw the line? What happens if you get controversial?

A year ago Gretchen Ledgard, then of the JobsBlog, a pioneering blog on corporate technical recruiting at Microsoft, got hit with inspiration and put up a post that would change her career. She went on a rant of sorts, which got picked up by CNET and hit above the fold on Google News. Reactions were all over the place, and that event sowed the seeds of Gretchen’s eventual departure from Microsoft to co-found her own company, JobsSyntax.

A year gone by, and Gretchen comes back with a wonderful write up of what happened, including her reactions, the reactions of colleagues and management, and of her readers. Her post is one of the best examples I’ve seen yet of what happens when you dance on that fine line as a corporate blogger:

Zoë asked me what I learned from this experience.  Do I have any advice for fellow bloggers out there, especially those who are blogging for a business?  Did I learn how to post and not be taken out of context?  Or is that just a battle wound you have to be willing to take if you blog?

I do think it’s a risk you have to be willing to take.  I tempered my tone during my final year with JobsBlog in order to avoid future “episodes”, and I began to despise blogging because it just wasn’t fun anymore.  Stuff will happen and you just have to learn to deal.  That’s the way blogging life goes.  My best advice is to act gracefully when bumps occur.  And never ever apologize.

Rock on Gretchen, and thanks for sharing. Read it all (or better yet, subscribe)

Found this on Proudly Serving’s post “Is Microsoft Blogging, Like, Dunzo?” itself worth a read on the same subject (my answer – no it’s far from “dunzo”, but I agree we need more Dare’s and Larry’s to tell the real, unvarnished stories about life at the company, lest our blogs evolve into just another tool in the corporate communications mix)