If Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book had placed its last chapter first, I would not have needed a bottle of tums, headache medication, or would have subjected other marketing professionals and my college age daughters to my ranting over the past two weeks. The reading for this week- at least all but Chapter 15- was a source for Scoble and Israel’s continued evangelism for blogging and a soapbox for their premise that blogging is the answer for all corporate woes, as well as the facilitator of corporate growth. According to them, if you don’t blog, you aren’t transparent and if you aren’t transparent, you and your company will lack authenticity. While the first part of the book seemed to sell the reader on the virtues of blogging, the second part of the book was a “how-to” instruction manual for writing and using a blog. According to the authors a good blog should be interesting, should not be written by a “character,” because it was, G-d forgive, it would impede the blog’s essence of credibility or authenticity. According to Scoble and Israel, blogs should be written by an employee of a company and should tell all the inside gossip of those companies. The book implied that companies, like Target, that did not have culture condusive to blogging were closed and secretive. In their estimation, HP made a huge mistake when company employees did not blog about Carly Fiorina’s ousting from the company. What are they YENTAS? In order for a company to be authentic and responsive to their customers do they have to air their dirty laundry in public? Is this condoned in Scoble and Israel’s families? As the authors did in the first part of the book, they again displayed their prejudice toward marketing professionals by accusing them of controlling messages or using integrated marketing to “intertwine messages and extortions in ad nauseum.” Many of the “11 best practices” for blogging –demonstrate passion, show authority, have a two-way conversation, be accessible, leave contact information, tell a good story- are all what I consider best practices for any company in dealing with its customers. According to the authors, only companies that blog are able to properly avert a crisis. In the discussion about Kryptonite and how through the blogosphere a problem with their bike lock was disclosed, Scoble and Israel implied that the company should have also used blogging to communicate with their customers on how they were correcting the problem. This again raises a question for me… Who are the bloggers? Do all Kryptonite customers blog? It would seem to me that in this case, blogging should been ONE tool that the company uses to reach its mix of customers. After all, a good marketing person knows that not all market demographics receive information through the same method. Hence integrated marketing! Furthermore, the crisis management and blogging tips for companies are also those, which I or other marketing communications specialists, would suggest to companies. Have a crisis plan worked out to communicate to customers the problem and how your plan to have it resolved. So, now my thoughts on the last chapter… I am thrilled that Israel and Scoble realize that blogging is a communications “tool”-not the end all be all- which does help improve the conversation between companies and their customers. I am delighted that they also admitted that perhaps that culture does indeed play a role in companies and countries and that, according to Israel and Scoble, culture can’t be dismissed in discussing social media. In my opinion, the continued evolution of communication is just that… a continuum. Blogging is important today, but there will be another technology in the future that will further open lines of conversation between companies and their customers, companies and their investors, and companies and the media.
