Blogs as Unimaginative Failures

By Jason Carmel | 0 Comments | Posted in in Analytics , Marketing | Permalink

I'll admit, when my fellow ZAAZ-blog auteur Chris Kerns sent me a WSJ article entitled "Most Corporate Blogs Are Unimaginative Failures," and suggested I write about it, I couldn't figure out whether he was trying to be thought-provoking or secretly implying that my blogging sucks and tempting me to stand in front of the blogosphere in the emperor's new clothes (as it were). If I thought about it too hard, it almost seemed like the blogger-equivalent of telling someone that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary, or muttering very softly under your breath "adillholesayswhat". I'll assume he is taking the high road on this (a n00b mistake at ZAAZ, perhaps).

The article references a Forrester report that accuses most B2B blogs of being little more than refried corporate marketing hyped up as "Web 2.0," with all of the personality and ingenuity of prison food. Barely a quarter of all entries results in any significant conversation, and as a result, far fewer Fortune 500 companies are getting into the game.

I appreciate the good people at Forrester quantifying this, but I can't say it comes as any surprise. I imagine that the decision to get into the blogging game initially for many companies went a little something like this:

Marketing Guy #1 - My niece told me that she reads about American Idol on a blog. Says all her friends do too. Thing gets more visits than Santa's lap in December.

Marketing Guy #2 - Sweet Mary Lou Retton, I love American Idol! And we've been getting slaughtered in the "young tech-savvy people I can't relate to" demographic. We need a blog ASAP.

And so our intrepid Marketing Heroes set out to start a blog, without discussing important things like purpose, measurement of success, voice/tone, sustainability (i.e., do we have enough content for regular, meaningful posts), and ownership/moderation. Three months into the blog, they realize that coming up with posts takes real thought and work, which they can't support, so they phone it in by posting press releases word for word. They get a few negative comments and decide it's easier just to turn off the ability to comment altogether rather than address any criticisms directly. And (perhaps most importantly) since they can't linearly connect the readership of the blog to any purchases or leads, the project quickly loses what little financial and political resources it ever had. As I type this, to be honest, I'm surprised there are any B2B blogs left at all for Forrester to study.

For me, the biggest take-away from this is how a well-timed conversation about goals would lead to a startlingly different result. Understanding why the conversation inherent in a blog is important, how much effort it will require, and how it will be measured is especially important for social web applications to avoid "unimaginative failures."