Blog Council: big brands, best practices, behind closed doors
I'm a little late to the party, but this past Wednesday a press release was issued announcing a new group, the Blog Council.
"The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs."
There's an interesting discussion taking place among the LinkedIn Blogger's group, with some seeing virtue and some seeing vice.
Lacking any conclusions myself at this point, here's a brief roundup of some of the conversation taking place:
- Huge Companies Form Blog Council - Shel Israel
- ANBT: The Blog Council - Josh
- Corporate Bloggers Form Blog Council - Rick Calvert
- The Blog Council: a How NOT to Corporate Blog Guide - Marketing Pilgrim
- Corporate Blog Council Should Swallow Hard and Learn from Critics - Paul Gillin
A search among my RSS feeds for the term "Blog Council" generates 159 returns to date. Blogrunner has a thread going on the topic, and several posts have been aggregated at Social Media Today. Add to that a and one at and you have to conclude that the brains behind this venture, Andy Sernovitz, who founded WOMMA, certainly knows how to put philosophy into practice and generate significant word-of-mouth, albeit mostly negative at this point.
I will leave you with two observations:
I admire men like Sernovitz. Even if their efforts are misdirected, as some would conclude, at least they're doing something noteworthy. In the spring of 2005, I attempted to start an association of bloggers that was not too dissimilar in its goals, that of bringing professional bloggers together in a conclave to discuss items like blogging best practices and ethical standards. It built up a small head of steam, but nothing of substance ever materialized. (My fault)
Back then, the idea of a best practices and standards scenario for blogging was met with some derision, and perhaps rightly so. But, these days, with blogging moving into the mainstream (at least that's what we keep telling ourselves), perhaps that time has come -- at least where large corporations are concerned.
I'm waiting to hear what pundits like Debbie Weil, who arguably wrote the book on corporate blogging, and Seth Godin, who wrote the book on just about everything else marketing related, have to say. The fact that neither have said anything may be telling enough.
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