Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

The Blog Council

by Rachel on December 10th, 2007

I’ve been working my way through a a lot of the posts commenting on The Blog Council. A lot of the coverage is negative, saying that they must be desperate, calling out the companies for wanting to share things in private and not be open about it, for having a ‘blog’ with no comments. There’s a lot more out there and not much of it complimentary.

I’m surprised at some of the reactions. The companies involved at not new to this, they are not clueless, they are some of the most advanced corporates when it comes to blogging. Dell, Microsoft etc have been praised in the past for blogging, for the change that such activity has made to their businesses. But for some reason, the fact that the leaders in the space feel the need to get together and discuss what they are doing is attacked. (One question though - where are Sun and IBM?)

They are being pretty open with what they are doing, putting up a site with the announcement of their first meeting and a review of the sort of sessions they are doing. Why shouldn’t a group of blogging companies work together to look at things like ROI, legal practices, metrics, policy vs strategy. It’s a waste for them all to do it separately, sharing the work and getting a common solution is far more effective and reduces the mistakes being made. Make a mistake once, share it and stop the other members doing the same.

Some commentary picks up on the fact they should be out there and talking to people who are expects. They may be and setting up a group is a good way to share that expertise. Many of them talk directly to customers through their blogs, hopefully they can share the best ways of doing this. I think what I’m trying to say is that is nothing inherently wrong in wanting to get together with peers to discuss common subjects. I have a couple of points:

• Think about your communications. Sending out a press release about the Council formation may work for the traditional press, but different wording is needed for your online communications. Also address more fully the lack of direct feedback mechanisms on your website. If you are not going to be blogging, with comments etc, do some round-ups of reactions to acknowledge the WOM buzz that has been created and address soem of the issues raised in the many posts.
• You’ve made a big announcement, got some press so what next. Are you just going to have meetings and never do anything. How are you going to feed back discussions, actions, recommendations? If you put together common best practices, such as metrics, are you going to invite comments and observations, like Ogilvy did with their Blogger Outreach policy? Communicate this and some of the grumbling may go away - or get worse if you are keeping everything to yourselves!

I like what they have done and see potential. A company is more likely to start using social media tools like blogs if they discuss with their peers who are doing the same then any number of consultants telling them to do so. This has the chance to increase adoption and I hope they make the most of it.

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POSTED IN: Blogging and Blogs, Buzz Marketing, Consumer Packaged Goods