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]

Categories: Uncategorized dw