Subscribe
Once Again, the Cluetrain has Left the Station
December 13th, 2007 by StephenPosted in Blog, Books, Cluetrain, New Media, Web 2.0/Media |
If you're new here, Welcome! To learn more about what this site is all about click here [link].
I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.
Subscribe by E-mail for updates on: Productivity methods, Lifestyle innovation, and the collaborative design of the next-generation personal knowledge management system.
Click Here for an overview of the content. 
Please take a look at our sponsors. (Hosting isn't free...)
Please contact me via e-mail: stephen @ hdbizblog dot com
Airbag has a snide twist on the launch of the Blog Council:
After six years big business still has no idea what to do with this blog thing.
The Blog Council, a professional community of top global brands dedicated to promoting best practices in corporate blogging, officially launched today. Founding members include the leading companies from a diverse range of business sectors: AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.
Oh, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Of course, these are the companies that should know right? I mean they’ve been using Trapper Keepers and Daytimers all their lives, so blogs are just like that right? A neat folder system for your mind-thoughts?
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.
Read: We’re going share notes on how we pretend to be fifteen year olds who can’t stop blogging about how great our products are and how to avoid being sniffed out as a fraudlog two hours after the first post. Oh, and we’re going to have a lovely salad with Pacific Northwest farmed salmon for lunch.
I can save these big corporations a ton of cash, and a trip to Orlando in January (not cheap) that promises “Deep questions, open discussion, no judging.”
Ah, shouldn’t there be some judging? If the suits can’t judge each other, who will? Oh, wait, it’s the customers who will do the judging.
Well, in an effort to be a benefactor to these late adopters, I would like to reach out to the Blog Council liaisons of the following companies:
Here is my FREE ADVICE to you : Buy these two books (click the amazon links right here and save a bunch of time).
Read them.
From cover to cover.
With a pen and a notebook next to you (for taking notes).
If you still don’t get it, send me an e-mail at training [at] hdbizblog [dot] com and I’ll help you out. For a lot less than Hugh Hewitt will charge you.
Free piece of advice #1 - You do not control the conversation anymore. And your “Blog Council” won’t get that control back.
Technorati Tags: New Media, Cluetrain
Powered by ScribeFire.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6zwex4. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
Get involved with the 
December 13th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
While you’re entitled to your opinion, I disagree with your cynical viewpoint. As the VP, Marketing for AccuQuote (member company of the Blog Council), I have spearheaded our blogging initiative from the beginning. I have read Cluetrain Manifesto, Naked Conversations, as well as been an avid reader of blogs by: Shel Israel, BL Ochman, Jeremiah Owyang and other notable bloggers. The use of our blog has been positively written about and featured by many top authors including Jack Myers and Joseph Jaffe.
When we first started our blog, I sought out advice and assistance from Tom Hespos, Founder of Underscore Marketing because of his expertise in the conversational marketing arena. We use our blog for two primary purposes. First we use it as a medium to educate our consumers through quality content in an arena in which consumers can interact with us through questions and comments. Second, we use the blog as a sounding board with our customers to find ways to continually improve our business.
AccuQuote is not alone in terms of companies that are joining the conversation (not only through our blog, but through also engaging in dialogue on other relevant blogs)as opposed to polluting the blogsphere with one-way only messaging. This being said, there is a big differnce between the considerations that you must think about in regards to your blog versus those that a company like Microsoft or Dell must think about. The purpose of Blog Council for for the member companies to share best practices so that we can all grow and contribute a valuable piece to the blogsphere. After all, “Markets are conversations.”
December 13th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
>Sean Cheyney: Thank you for stopping by, and kudos to you for catching the links as quickly as you did. Please allow me to make a couple of points:
1. The very first sentence of this post notes that “Airbag has a snide twist” on the Blog Council. Airbag provides the cynicism, I merely report on it. My riff is not one of cynicism, but rather of humor and opportunism. I have worked for companies that would not allow employee blogging under any circumstances, let alone an official blog. And I wanted to poke fun and offer my own meager services as the lowest bidder.
2. I have looked at your corporate blog, and Valeria does a very nice job. Her writing is concise and informative. Oddly, if one clicks on the “Valeria Weber” link, there is a list of Ms. Weber’s posts, 24 in the last 30 days, and these 3 photos in the sidebar (none of which is Ms. Weber’s). I find that very unusual, for your primary blogger not to be part of “our team”.
Why does your most prolific blogger not rate a photo? Your own posts look to be about four-times-a-year, and cover such riveting topics as “Accuquote is looking for your help” (job postings), What flavor of Spam do you prefer?, Would you like a brochure or a keychain?, and a list of your New Year’s Resolutions (by the way, where is the post on how you did with those?).
3. I’m sure that I do not want to sound cynical, but us little “blogosphere polluters” have heard this song before. I would prefer that you not get up on your high horse and lecture me about how you “educate our consumers through quality content in an arena in which consumers can interact with us through questions and comments” when there have been 0 (zero) comments on Ms. Weber’s posts over the past 30 days. That is not a conversation, that is “one-way only messaging” as you put it.
4. And finally, yes, there is a tremendous difference between “the considerations that you must think about in regards to your blog versus those that a company like Microsoft or Dell must think about”, because my blog is my only product and service. If I mess this up, my customers go away, along with any ad revenue. Therefore I must (and do) have a conversation in this market with my customers (I mean readers, sorry, that happens when I have to speak to the suits).
Your purpose for joining the Blog Council is unclear, but likely to get a trip to Orlando. I can see very clearly that GasPedal’s purpose for the Blog Council is (a brilliant marketing ploy of astonishing genius) for GasPedal to rake in some dough.
I look forward to continuing this conversation, and perhaps we can both learn something.
Best regards,
Stephen
December 13th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
> As the VP, Marketing for AccuQuote (member company of the Blog Council), I have spearheaded our blogging initiative from the beginning.
Why? Do you also hire marketing executives to teach you how to meet with clients? How to talk to clients on the phone? Have you hired a coach to train you on how to approach a new business contact, or do you use your own education, experience, and instinct to guide you through those situations? I would hope for the later.
So why depend on some marketing guru to teach you how to carry on a conversation online? Sure these type of people have their place but for corporations to put such a public and conversational form of communication up on pedestal only works against you. You’re smart people, start trusting your own instincts and let your hair down once and a while.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
@ Sean -
I have no beef with corporations blogging. It’s a good thing for all the reasons you stated here and on your own site. The problems I see with the route you’re taking are:
1. Thinking you need or even allowing a council to tell you how to talk to your customers. A Blog Council? Are you serious? Nothing will come out of your Orlando trip other than some stuffed shirts, even stuffier language and some misguided notions on what a conversation really is.
And as Stephen mentioned, I too am really curious about the financials lurking back there in the shadows.
2. Thinking you need assistants/assistance to discover “best practices” for blogging in the “conversational marketing arena.” Talk to people like they’re your friends or family…that’s the only best practice I know of. And I think if your blogging goes that direction it’ll be successful.
Lastly, you said “there is a big differnce(sic) between the considerations that you must think about in regards to your blog versus those that a company like Microsoft or Dell must think about.” I’m not so sure that’s true, although I have no doubt that you believe it. Could you elucidate on what you think those differences are? And I’ll be paying close attention to your answers because my businesses/customers are intimately tied to blogging.