The Marketing Sherpa has five steps for major corporations launching blogs. Oh, joy, we’re gonna get more committee-run blogs.
That’ll be one heck of an exciting corporate blog, for sure! Hey, Mini, do you agree with any of these suggestions? Heheh!
Wrong first step, too. The right first step is to read blogs!
Funny, I didn’t start blogging by checking with the stakeholders. Or having any goals. In fact, I still don’t really have any goals for my blog. I meet cool people. See cool tech. Experience life. And write about it. If someone shows up here, great, if not, no biggie. I blogged when I had no readers and now that I have readers, I feel blessed and definitely have had better experiences, but I’d still blog either way.
It’s funny, this morning I had breakfast with Darcy Burner. She’s running for Congress. We talked about the world of politics. I told her about Memeorandum’s political/current events page.
She told me that there really are only 40 congressional districts that are “in play” during the next election. Hers is one of them. It’s amazing just how few voters can change the world.
The world of politics is interesting cause I really don’t care that much about it, but it’s not every day that you get a personal email from someone running for Congress asking to get together for breakfast.
She wasn’t looking for money from me, or even a blog post. She just wanted to talk about the modern blog world and see if she should try some other things like podcasting and videoblogging. Yes! See, the world of a political candidate is a world of making time choices. Does she speak to this group or that? Which reporters should she spend time with? Which potential donors should she call?
Time is against her.
And, so, blogging doesn’t seem that important to most political candidates. After all, very few of her constituents read blogs.
So, why do them? Well, scale. Spend an hour blogging or an hour talking to an audience? Which one will give her the most scale? And, which one will let her talk to her most passionate members about what caught her eye in Memeorandum this morning?
But, back to marketing sherpa. I think that totally misses the power of participating in the conversation. Totally misses the power of the word-of-mouth network. Totally misses that blogging is just people trying to share their lives. Having a policy just is so antithetical to what this is all about. Blech.
Every day I metaphorically wave to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer on my way to work (they work a few hundred yards from where I’m sitting) and say “thank you for not making me blog in a committee.”
Oh, Darcy, your blog is interesting, but you need to let your constituents get to know you the way I got to know you in an hour today. We had a great conversation. Screw what the Republicans are gonna do to you. Don’t let them drive the conversation. Invite us over. Turn on comments. Post pictures from your travels (feature your constituents, they love the attention!!!) Post videos. Have conversations with serious political types. I’d love to hear you strategizing. Be transparent! Yes, your competitors will use that against you, but the more transparent you are, the more of a movement you’ll build.
Oh, she did get something right, though. She promised me she’d keep blogging if she gets elected. Why is that important? The guy she’s running against has only come back twice to have a conversation with people in the home district.
Bing, bing, bing! Darcy is not Howard Dean (who never blogged himself and stopped talking with all of us after he lost the Iowa primary).
I just donated $100 because of that pledge alone.
Scobleizer 