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October 20, 2004

are you afraid to blog?

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“Are you afraid to blog?” Great, great post by one of my favo­rite blog­gers, Microsoft’s Robert Sco­ble, about the power of cor­po­rate blog­ging. One of the best artic­les I’ve read in months.

“OK, what are the rea­sons I should let my emplo­yees blog?“
Here’s my obser­va­tions:
1) Peo­ple don’t trust cor­po­ra­tions. Espe­cially big and suc­cess­ful ones like, um, Mic­ro­soft. Come on, be honest, none of you really trust us to do the right thing, do you? So, how do we show you that we’re trust­worthy? We need to invite you deep inside our cor­po­rate struc­tu­res and talk to you like human beings. It’s exactly why Chan­nel 9 reso­na­tes with so many of you.
2) Peo­ple don’t like tal­king to cor­po­ra­tions. Again, be honest, if you saw a press release from a big com­pany asking for you to pro­vide feed­back on something, would you? Hey, Mic­ro­soft has had “mswish@microsoft.com” for a long time. Even when I was a cus­to­mer of Microsoft’s, I’d never send anything to that address. Why? I never thought anyone was lis­te­ning. Do any of you feel any dif­fe­rently? Yet I get so much email now giving Mic­ro­soft feed­back about our pro­ducts that I can’t keep up (I’m four days behind).
3) That old “mar­kets are con­ver­sa­tions” thing. If you haven’t read the Clue­train Mani­festo, why not…?

If you don’t “get it” after rea­ding it, you never will. Sorry.

One Response to “are you afraid to blog?”

1. DJ Coffman says:

   October 20, 2004 at 1:31 PM

   Thats an exce­llent breakdown.