Nick Denton of Gawker, Gizmodo (etc. etc.) fame is perhaps the best known face on the commercial blog scene and certainly the most quoted these days. I also think he is quite incorrect in his understanding of why people read blogs, which means I think his business model is not one I would care to follow myself. Do I think all of what the redoubtable Denton does is wrong? No, not at all, but I do not really think the foremost advocate of blogging-for-business really understand blogs that well and I do not think he understand the blogosphere at all.
Most people do not look at something because they want to have advertisements shoved in front of them. Old style ‘interruption marketing’ might work when people have few options, say just a few TV channels, and are willing therefore to accept advertising as the ‘price’ for something else they value, but what Nick Denton seems to be saying is that there are lots of people who actually like reading ad-copy and will read blogs that are just well packaged advertisements (or ‘advertainment’ if you prefer) when the Internet is awash with places giving content away and doing no such thing. I simply do not believe that is true. Yet I do believe that there is a role for commercial blogging.
People read blogs to get a different perspective, even if they do not always agree with it. If people want to read a blog which is largely advertisement dressed up in well written urban hip and blog-speak rather begs the question, why would such a person not just stick to established media channels which are filled with endless marketing? Are blog readers really so dim as to not pick out the fact they are just being handed the same old interruption marketing message dressed up in a slightly different way?
I think for a commercial blog to succeed, it must do the same thing as a successful non-commercial blog, and that means it must be interesting and credible to its audience. In fact I would say a blog is a ‘credibility machine’. To use the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a blog must speak with the author’s authentic voice if it is to be believed… and it is a rare company indeed who can be authentic if all people hear from them is what their marketing and PR department say.
For a companies and other institutions to blog successfully, and people like Macromedia, The Adam Smith Institute, Microsoft and others do indeed blog successfully, then they actually have to speak in ways that are a long way from a press release that has been carefully worded by the PR department, and a million miles away from copy produced by an advertising agency. No one actually believes that crap any more and sticking it on a blog just makes it stand out like poop on a pool table.
No, if a company wants to blog, it needs to decide that it wants to be forthright and talk to people like human beings… if you have desirable or difficult or complex products and have interesting things to say about them, people might actually be interested in hearing what you have to say if you can convince them you are not just parroting the same old sales pitches served up for the Google Generation.
I don’t think companies could view weblogs as an advertising opportunity, because of their two-way structure in communication, and because of the lack of formal control that marketing departments could hold over these communication channels. It is unlikely that weblogs will acquire a hold amongst the corporates, who often attempt to comply, or appear to comply, with the full panoply of regulations.
If a company establishes a public weblog, will it be viewed as an advertisement and subjected to the appropriate law? I could easily imagine the Advertising Standards Authority licking its chops in order to investigate a complaint and expand its regulatory empire across weblogs established by companies or other institutions.
The second area where company weblogs and regulation may clash is corporate governance, insider trading etc. etc. As a conduit of information to the public domain, any company weblog would be expected to comply with these regulations. In heavily regulated areas like financial services, the FSA would expect a system of processes and controls to examine and manage the risks that a company weblog(s) entailed.
Therefore, it is probable that private companies in lightly regulated or non regulated industries will benefit far more from establishing a weblog, if they have someone interesting and skilled enough to write one.
I agree. And I can easily imagine a successful blog for a certain kind of business. A company that makes a specialized kind of product, and has a close, casual relationship with its customers, could blog successfully. For example, the company that makes the kits for the airplane I’m building, Van’s Aircraft, could probaby blog successfully. This is a smallish, privately-held company that has a very close relationship with it’s customers. A typical customer will buy the various bits and pieces to build his or her plane over a period of several years, with many technical questions to be answered along the way.
By comparison, I’ve spent most of my working life in large organizations and corporations, and I find it hard to imagine such places running successful blogs. Partly because there would be far too many fingers in the pie, and also because they don’t have a sufficiently intimate relationship with their customers.
uhm, thanks for the kind words, appreciated… I shall endeavor henceforth to never tarnish the billiards facilities, or (if I inadvertently do so), to at least be as neat as possible about it all…. 😉
Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support
Todd McHenry – I believe Land Rover has a magazine it puts out for owners, worldwide. These people, the owners, are committed. A blog for them, which probably already exists, would be a success – as you assume with your Van. Special interest products will attract devotees, meaning, their blog will be a success.
For the other commercial blogs, they will inevitably have to toe the line that print journalism has toed for 300 years. Give people lots of interesting stories and comment for a low price (in the case of blogs, nothing) and the advertisers may follow. That’s the way the market works. Not the other way round.