I guess I kind of touched Jon Toigo nerve when I said he was “promoting himself”. Sounds like he took offense to the term, but perhaps he shouldn’t have!
Let me give you some background, gentle reader… I’ve never worked for a “product company” in the storage industry, I’m a services guy. And services are all about selling people – their skills and their time. So rather than promoting a new box or piece of software, we in the services business promote ourselves, which I personally feel is the most honest thing to promote! After all, we each have different skills – all we services companies can do is try to distill a similar set of skills to offer and hope that people are interested.
And, frankly, we all engage in self-promotion every time we blog (as a verb). Blogging is all about rising above the crowd and saying “my opinion is important.” Unlike traditional media, however, it is democratic: Anyone can blog, anyone can try to be important, and the world will judge just how important they are.
Perhaps this is why people find corporate marketing blogs (aka blogketing) to be so insidious. They are, seemingly, not the acts of individual initiative but of organizational co-option and perhaps even surreptition. We feel that they are somehow less honest, since the person writing the words may be checking his true feelings at the door.
But perhaps not. I agree with Jon’s assertion that corporate blogs give us a little insight, even if it is packed in salt grains. And they certainly give us democratic communication – just like anyone can blog, anyone can comment, and blog writers (even the most corporate) tend to read their thoughts. Plus, as Beth Pariseau noted, the back and forth can be both enlightening and enjoyable to watch!
Blogket away, I say. Self-promote, too. It’s a post-modern world: I’ll figure out what your angle is…
If you enjoyed reading this, you’ll probably also like my Foskett Services blog!