“Big Business “Blog Council” created, business world yawns” from The Intuitive Life Business Blog
Dave Taylor nails it. I don’t need to spend money and time commiserating with JAMS (Just Another Marketing Suit) about corporate blogging or word of mouth marketing. When are blogs going to cease being two-headed chickens? Do PR people have associations devoted to discussion of press releases? This isn’t rocket science people, so wake up.
Anyway, Taylor says it better than I. And no, I wasn’t invited to join. Then again, I don’t own an island in Second Life either.
“I woke up this morning to a lot of fawning messages from people in the blogosphere about the new Blog Council, founded by a dozen big companies that generally just don’t have a clue about modern customer relations and marketing: AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.
“Let’s read their press release (press release about a blogging group?) to get a sense of what they’re doing:
“The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.”
Okay, ready for ten totally off-the-cuff (let me reach around the back of my chair, dig around, and pull something out of my pants) tenets of corporate blogging?
- Don’t join a committee devoted to corporate blogging
- Don’t read a book about corporate blogging
- Start a blog
- Start the blog on WordPress, enable comments, and post full text, not excerpts
- Be a half-way decent writer with something interesting to say (Read Strunk & White’s Elements of Style annually)
- Don’t use the “Royal We”
- Don’t bullshit or dissemble
- Don’t let your CEO blog unless he already has a blog or really likes to write and has the time to do it
- Avoid corporate blogging policies over a page long
- Don’t make promises to pissed off customers you can’t keep
- and bonus suggestion, you don’t need to pay anyone to monitor blogs for you, just figure out Technorati, Google Blog Search and Google Reader or Bloglines and do it yourself
Seriously, want to talk about corporate blogging? Ping me. I give free advice to anyone who asks.
*and the crowd goes wild*
Good list, I’ve done most of this (except your #1)…I’ve learned a lot from a combination of just plain doing it and reading and listening to others who went before or after me. I’m a part of this effort for just this reason – to get in a room with others looking to do this every day and learn both what works and what failed. I agree, it’s not that complicated nor do I see a down side in getting together with each other a few times a year to discuss.
sean
Microsoft
Reading and listening doesn’t involve joining a council. Let’s talk about WOMMA and the benefits of going to Orlando to listen to people talk about Buzz and viral? What’s the payoff, some sort of face-to-face Hints from Heloise on how to get carpet stains out with vinegar?
Sounds like an excuse to go to Vegas and wear funny hats.
Funny hats are good.
Yesterday I (er, we) traded messages with a PR person who said she was “stuck in the world’s longest messaging meeting”. And I thought, that notion seems kinda quaint.
The reason I go to conferences is to connect with other attendees. Rarely have I seen a presentation that really justified the time and cost to get there. But the hallway introductions and conversation are good. I don’t have any funny hats….and I don’t gamble, I don’t care to drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t golf – I hate vegas. If a council can shorten the path to get to my peers for those hallway conversations – I’m in. Frankly, my problem with with most conferences is getting swarmed by agencies, vendors and consultants who want to talk about buzz and viral (neither of which I buy into) and schedule demos and follow up calls I probably don’t need or want.
Happy to chat about this realtime as well – DM me in twitter at seanodmvp or email me at seanod (at) Microsoft.com and we can connect if you like.
sean
Microsoft
David:
You’re missing two critical rules – don’t let PR or Legal edit your blog posts.
Tom O’Brien
http://www.motivequest.com
Good add Tom…if they do it isn’t a blog. That said, it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge some companies (financial/securities and medical/pharma) are in govt regulated industry and have to do what they have to do…but I’m not familiar enough with those issues to really address what might or might not be different.
sean
Microsoft
D: I think Mr. Taylor nailed it with this quote:
My translation: “we’re all clueless, but don’t want anyone to realize just how unplugged our organizations have become from the world of “marketing 2.0″, so we created a club so our ignorance can be shielded from public eyes.” Amen!