Joho the Blog
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April 20, 2005
Graeme Thickens, in a de-hyping mood, gives ten reasons why businesses won't blog. I agree that business has been slow to pick up on blogs, but I find too many of his reasons unconvincing. For example: "Businesses don't do passion." True, but employees do. And employees, not businesses. write blogs. "Business doesn't like gossip." So now we know which types of blogs Graeme's been reading :) "Businesses already communicate well in various ways." Puhlease! Businesses can barely croak out intelligible phrases. Have you heard an executive talk recently? Or a marketer? That's maybe the biggest reason why businesses ought to blog: Employees get to talk like humans. "Business writing style and blogger style don’t even come close." See above. Other of his points make more sense to me. I agree that companies don't like to do public experiments and blogs take time without providing an easy-to-measure ROI. And companies do need reassurance that they can have some measure of control over what gets blogged on their site: They can set up policies and editors. But Graeme, I think, misses two points. First, blogs are more likely, IMO, to show up internally. As project groups come to rely on blogs as a great way of communicating and capturing their knowledge, companies will get more comfortable with outward-facing blogs. Second, Graeme ends by saying he's much more excited about word-of-mouth marketing. From my point of view, the companies who succeed at word-of-mouth marketing will do so by entering the blogging fray as equals. [Technorati tag: blogs] Posted
by D. Weinberger at April 20, 2005 10:45 AM
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Comments
He said it, not me!
"You wouldn't be wrong if you assumed that most of these people either (a) have too much time on their hands, or (b) are always looking for another attention-getting promotional vehicle so they can get some paying work."
More deeply, he can't outright say the following, but lurking throughout the article is this thread:
Business is about subsuming the invididual within the structure of the organization. That does not mix well with an ethos of intense personal self-expression.
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein | April 20, 2005 03:55 PM
The tag line on the article: "Graeme Thickins is a 25-year marketing and public relations professional"
And the #1 reason why businesses won't do blogs (in Thickins's view, of course)? Because like the Gutenberg press did to the scribes, blogs (and the daughters and sons of blogs) will put the marketing and public relations professionals out of business.
Posted by: Mark Federman | April 20, 2005 04:35 PM
The backlash against BoingBoing was even more interesting.
And of course, once you set up policies and editors, it's not a blog-- it's no longer that personal voice.
Obviously organizations and companies are going to experiment with all different types of communications technologies-- #10 on Graeme's list. There's more than blogging out there.
Posted by: Jon Garfunkel | April 20, 2005 10:15 PM
The biggest reason businesses won't blog is that businesses have lawyers and lawyers are wimps.
Also, in my experience, marketers are getting very excited about blogs and want to do them (even if they don't quite get the bit about personal voice). Lawyers squash that, though.
Posted by: ralph | April 21, 2005 06:49 AM