And writes about it way better than I ever could have. And I'm not saying that just because he references my post.
honest.
You know, I've been in the business world--marketing in particular, PR against my better judgment--for 20 years now. I know motives when I smell them. It was my job to spin them for the biggest of the big for a long time.
I am not saying CEOs shouldn't blog. I am saying corporations shouldn't blog. They should connect with bloggers and support our voices because, well, duh, we are their customers and we are their employees.
I am saying that CEOs shouldn't look at blogging as a way for them to write their own press releases, sound "smart," and save some money on marketing. Because that's really not necessary: WE ALREADY KNOW YOU LIKE YOUR OWN STUFF.
If "legitimate executives" decide to blog, they ought to show something of themselves. They ought to write about the car accident they had last week, about who they talked to on the plane to London and what ideas the conversation sparked, and they ought to do that more than they talk about their next seminar. [Link to Mr. Meckler's blog absent because he doesn't have permalinks yet.]
I've seen companies go at blogging early and wrong. I was at one of them. In most of the cases, the company's marketing department or web design group is being charged with the task of "getting us into that blogging thing," and the result is a dramatic increase in pixel-litter on the web. Nothing more.
One of the largest companies in the U.S. was picking my brain about weblogging recently. They were unable to get their heads out of demographic-think and into micromarket-think. They can't stop targeting and start talking. They just can't. And if you think the corporate lawyers will let them think differently, then understand that those lawyers--at least in this case--are paid good money not to let them.
To me, there is more evidence that the business value of blogging lies in the way we connect as 'people' first (people who share passions or concerns AND who happen to work somplace or doing some thing for a living). Then, through this discovery of one another we're doing through blogging, if we click, we go to the marketplace together.
And, damn. I didn't know George Partington had gone until I read Tom's post. That sucks.
