1.Hi Shel,

I have a very large client who does that very thing. I would be willing to pass along a couple of names and facilitate some linking of your friend and the head of Communication at this company (it's one everyone knows).

Please drop me a note if you want to.

2.In most organizations, these communications positions certainly do not belong in IT. Textron has this job posted in the Communications department. More examples can be found in this manner. Also, look at the membership of the Intranet Business Forum - most have more sophisticated models for online communications management.

These books/blogs contains details and probably good examples and case studies:
John Cass's Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging

Debbie Weil's Corporate Blogging Book (Chapter 1 is available on her site)

This older, now free, Forrester report, contains corporate blog resources: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,35000,00.html
If you have a Forrester membership, access more current research by Charlene Li.

3.I'd suggest, for a very strong argument, your friend call up America Online, Microsoft and other well-known tech- ad web-sector companies who likely have advocacy and lobbying departments to discover the department to which the web content managers belong. I'd be very surprised if they're outside the Communications Department.

4.Shel,
I?m a long time fan. Back in the dark days of the web my company brought you in to teach us how to be better writers for the web. I have since moved on to another organization, but I still hold your tenants close to heart.

What they need is a strategist and IT can certainly play a small role in that regard, but best communication practices are not part of the IT toolbox.

Past the technology implementation phase of the project, they should be hands-off except when it comes to maintenance.

Asking your self a simple list of questions will garner the answer as to why IT can?t tackle this task without communication help.

What new media will you be leveraging? A blog, wiki or message board leverages much of the same technology, but how you communicate on them varies from medium to medium.

What are your workflows? Do your authors self-publish? While some may consider it verboten in the blogosphere, you have to decide if there will be a gatekeeper vetting content? Does IT have the schools to control corporate messaging?

Unless your IT department has a special friendship with YouTube their involvement in placing media on it is nil. Ease of use is what made YouTube such a success with the technology challenged.

It sounds to me like the IT department at this organization either doesn?t full understand the scope of the project or they have a skill set that every other IT department in the country is lacking: professional communication skills.

5.At my company, EarthLink, the corporate blog is run out of our product development group. I could easily make the argument that it should belong in corporate communications.

On the other hand, I work closely with our blogmaster. He brings a different perspective. As long as we collaborate, it works for me. Ideally it shouldn't make a difference what department the position rests in.

It used to be that corporate communications operated as one voice, from a small group of spokespeople using set message points.

Sure corporate communications still handles calls from the Wall Street Journal. But nowdays, I rely on multiple voices and multiple view points from employees across the country. As long as they conform to our blogging policy, I don't track what they say or coach them - whether it is on their own blogs or commenting on others. I believe it creates a more complete picture of who we are as a company. I don't believe we have to make distinctions between IT functions and corporate communications functions.

Ideally, all employees with a passion for what they are doing can engage in a conversation with public. In order to thrive in an age of transparency and decentralization, I am willing to yield some control. Hopefully the company and our customers will benefit.

6.Shel,

I work for Reed Elsevier which is the parent company of LexisNexis.

What your friend describes is not unusual. What she is hiring is a data-mining position. I have worked with a lot of these folks when I was in Customer Support for LexisNexis. I have never met one that had been employed by the IT department.

Have her drop me an email if she wants to talk.