When I first started working in Washington, in the ’90s, websites were still a novelty — a bad novelty. The average congressional website was little more than an electronic pamphlet featuring the face of a member of Congress smiling out like a trial attorney airbrushed onto an interstate billboard.

The federal agencies were even worse. Agency officials saw the Internet as a piece of technology, not a communications tool.

Website management was relegated to IT staff rather than to communications shops.

Things eventually improved, but despite the stunning advances in communications technology, most of federal Washington has still failed to grasp the meaning of Government 2.0. Indeed, much is mired in Government 1.5.

At the very minimum, corporate government affairs offices and public affairs professionals need to seriously consider whether the organization they represent should engage in the conversation taking place online by creating a blog presence.

Discussions and debates about public policy issues are taking place all the time within the blogosphere — with or without your organization’s involvement. While the concept of blogging continues to be met with skepticism and reluctance at the C-Suite level, the D.C.-based offices of corporations and associations should nonetheless consider creating a blog as part of their overall communications and lobbying strategies.

Relatively few corporate government relations offices have waded into these waters. But those that do – when they do it well – can have a great impact.

But I emphasize “when they do it well.” Blogging requires a different approach than most corporate policy offices are used to and comfortable with.

One of the key elements to success is to encourage the blog’s author to write with personality:

Despite its label, a “corporate” blog has to have a real personality as its primary voice. The content has to sound like and read like it is coming from a real individual or group of real individuals.

Let’s examine one shining example of a blog that reads more like its written by actual people than the public relations department– Cisco’s High Tech Policy blog. Take for instance the beginning of a recent post:

Last Friday in my flight back to Washington after three days of extensive meetings with ICT policy and industry leaders in Chile I was wondering about which were Chile’s ingredients of success that have facilitated Chile’s tremendous progress on ICT…

Notice that the author, Andrew Maz, tells a story about his flight back from Chile where he “wondered aloud” about the reasons for Chile’s success on ICT.

We sense that Andrew is sharing his personal thoughts with us.  We envision Andrew sitting in his seat on his trip back from Chile typing away on his laptop. We anticipate hearing his first stream-of-conscious, raw feelings about his trip unfiltered by an overbearing editor.

And that’s the key. In order to be successful with a corporate policy blog, the organization needs to give freedom to the bloggers to write on policy issues as a real person with a unique perspective. Sure, they need to be strong advocates for their employer. But they need to have their own voice and their own personality and not simply sound like they are merely regurgitating official corporate talking points.