Strumpette (aka Amanda Chapel / anonymous PR blogger / tall, athletic, Pantene shoulder-length black hair, perfect perky boobs - ed. note: you've got to be kidding) is all fired up today with her new meme: The Death of Corporate Blogging.
God, (s)he's clever the way she/he/it writes.
But (s)he's wrong: corporate blogging -- or at least the widespread use of blogging as a business communications tool is NOT dead. And I'm not just saying that because my new book, The Corporate Blogging Book (Penguin Portfolio August 2006), is coming out next week.
Well OK that's one reason I'm saying it.
Corporate blogging is just getting started
The real reason is oh so simple. Far from being dead, corporate blogging - the use of a blog either internally or externally as part of a company's online communications and marketing toolkit - is just getting started.
As Ken Yarmosh, who live-blogged my Washington DC book launch yesterday, put it:
"Despite the echoes we often hear in the halls of geek-dom, the blogosphere is not saturated yet. There are many, many more voices to come, blogging on everything from finance to real estate, to yes, even air conditioners. And I know, because I've met them this afternoon." - Ken Y.
Look, I'm sifting through the stack of business cards I got yesterday and here are the kinds of corporate blogging wannabes who attended (I won't use specific names out of respect for their privacy): commercial real estate, attorney-at-law, non-profit foundation, custom publishing group, government affairs office, board of trade, three or four national associations and so on.
Strumpy, read my book
Strumpy, read my book for god's sake and maybe you'll get it. I make a lot of points. Three of the key ones are this:
It's not about being cool
Corporate blogging is not about being cool. It's about following your customers where they're going... and that's online. You gotta be there to interact with your customers. It's that simple. Blogging enables an instant (or almost) conversation with them. And that's what people want. They want to be heard. They want to be acknowledged. Then they're more apt to do business with you and your organization.
A blog is just a publishing platform
A blog is just a platform, a powerful, simple, inexpensive Web publishing system. Why in heck wouldn't most companies adopt this platform? Call it Web 2.0. Call it common sense. Call it budget cutting. Who needs a whole IT department that takes months to update a page on a corporate site, when a non-techie manager can do it in minutes with blogging software?
Customers are driving this - not consultants
The new world that PR practitioners, marketing strategists and other consultants are touting is here. We haven't concocted it as a way to line our pockets with gold. Marketing has become a two-way conversation between customer and corporation. The big guys at the top have lost control or at least complete control. A lot of the best creative stuff (new ideas, great writing) is bubbling up from below.
With 40,000 or 60,000 or whatever new videos being posted everyday to YouTube, with trackbacks and tagging and RSS and digging and Technorati and del.ici.ous and all that cool stuff innovating, fine tuning and becoming easier for the non-techie to use every day... well I don't think it's a stretch to say that corporate blogging is here to stay.
Remember, those ordinary people are customers. They're driving this thing. Not the corporate blogging consultants.
Sorry Strumpy Strumpette, stuff it.
:)
Technorati: the corporate blogging book , corporate blogging , debbie weil
Previous Comments
Amanda Chapel said on July 26, 2006 at 04:45 PM
Populism is not democracy. Volume is not value. Talk is not work.
- Amanda
Shel Holtz said on July 26, 2006 at 07:40 PM
Relationships are everything. They were before the industrial revolution and the technology that has taken us into the era of social computing has made it so again. Conversations breed relationships.
Oh, and work is social. Organizations are collections of people brought together to achieve common goals. Regardless of what professionals do for a living, they spend most of their day engaged in conversation of some kind required to accomplish that work—phone, email, face-to-face. Talk is most certainly work…try getting work done without it.
It’s nice, isn’t it, Debbie, not to be mired in a bygone era?
Mike Sigers said on July 26, 2006 at 09:06 PM
You guys should be able to see thru such bold, brazen and bad link-baiting.
It’s obvious that corporate blogging is just starting to happen, but the blogosphere won’t read a post like that.
But write one post saying something ” is like, so over ! ” and every blogger who blogs about blogs will link your ass quicker than a strumpette will sleep with…well, er, anyone ?
Debbie Weil said on July 26, 2006 at 09:11 PM
Yeah yeah yeah. But what the heck… just having a little fun. Plus honestly I do feel rather passionately about this.
Mike Sigers said on July 26, 2006 at 09:55 PM
Nothing wrong with fun and she did use some big words that I was forced to look up and I actually learned something today !
Thanks Amanda !
I’m not against her, after all, anyone that’s got the cajones to write and publish that bio is someone I’d buy dinner for just to meet and listen to.
I feel passionate about corporate blogging too. I’m a pro-blogger for two different corporations that both pay me in the five figure range just to do their blogs.
I love corporate blogging ! It’s about 1000 times more lucrative than splogging for contextual ads dollars.
Amanda Chapel said on July 26, 2006 at 09:57 PM
Repeat the words of Shel Holtz, “Screw the owners!” Say it in you meetings. End your prayers with it. Shout it from the roof tops! And of course, remember to mumble it under your breath in the bread lines.
Shel, owners of stock don’t want your politics on their property, let alone to have to pay for that kind of counsel. Period.
- Amanda
Leo Bottary said on July 27, 2006 at 06:41 AM
I love your blog, but I think you’ve been Strumpetted! You’re paying way too much attention to this anonymous rant from the cheap seats. Let it go.
Amanda Chapel said on July 27, 2006 at 04:49 PM
Leo,
What does that even mean? Why do you “PR Pros” always sink to ad hominem arguments. Are your beliefs that weak? Sure looks that way.
- Amanda
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