30
January
2005
|
21:20 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Blogging is the most honest form of self-promotion out there...can corporations adjust?

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com


Almost every type of commercial venture will be affected by the use of blogging-type communication technologies. The largest question facing businesses, of all sizes, is how to make best use of this trend.


Their thirst for answers can be seen in the explosion of interest in this subject lately, at least by my personal barometer of being invited to speak at conferences! I received two invites in a single day recently, and I’m also increasingly asked to meet with companies and PR firms to chat about blogging. This compares with about one invite per month normally.


I like to get out and about and hear about how companies are thinking of using blogs, and what types of issues/problems they encounter. It's all part of reporting on how media and PR and tech sectors are changing. And there are huge numbers of companies, and their PR firms, struggling to understand and figure out what all this means. Some get it, most don’t, but there are many that know there is something going on, they have a gut feeling that there really is something important happening, even if they can't see it just yet...


I like speaking at conferences and visiting companies to talk about blogging, because blogging is an extraordinary form of communication. And it is ALL about maintaining the best qualities of journalism. Yes, there are innovative forms of journalism emerging from this blogging/process/technology, some you will see here. But nothing has changed the fact that great blogs are about great journalism, which is about telling compelling stories truthfully and fairly (not impartially).


This is why blogging is the most honest form of self-promotion out there bar none.


If you can’t walk your walk, or talk your talk, you will be found out and ignored. Trusted relationships are the currency of Internet 2.0, in this new/next phase of the internet. And it is a message corporations need to heed. (Oh, BTW, watch out for the shift in power structures within your work groups that the use of blogging and wikis can bring...!)


Through the process of publishing Silicon Valley Watcher, we are collecting best practices for this medium and a wealth of information and skills. I want to set up a business that allows us to share this information and show individuals and corporations how to use blogging in the most effective manner -- by applying the best principles of quality journalism. And I want to work with the best journalists/editors, and other top professionals, to further develop this new media and enable the death of marketing.


My goal is to make the term marketing meaningless, obsolete and struck from the dictionaries of the future.


Instead, blogging will enable effective and honest communications. Companies will communicate with their communities of customers.


The future is about the enterprise as publisher/publication.


Here is some proof of this trend, I've been sitting on this one for a while because it is so hot: Did you know that Cisco Systems' highly regarded online magazine, news@cisco.com gets more hits than several of the largest US business and computer trade publications?!


I can step you through this one if you want ... but I think you already know what this means.


More on this topic later this week, with exclusive data on how many hits the Cisco magazine is getting. (Thanks Ron!)


Link:


Cisco


in-house advert:


Are you trapped inside a crumbling print business model? Be a disruptor rather than a disruptee. Ping us...we're looking ;-)


dc451