Bob Bly is Wrong About Biz Blogs: Here's Why

Bob Bly is a well-known author, speaker and copywriter, but he doesn't know squat about blogs. What he does know is based on a common misconception: "blogs are online diaries."

Well, that maybe one definition of a blog, but it's the biggest perceptual error you can make, especially when it comes to business blogs.

Bob Bly has a blog, but his blog posts are few and far between. One of the ways to get good value on your blog is to post 2-3 times a week. Bob posts 1-2 times a month. Maybe his disenchantment comes of his own lack of ROI from his blog, due to not really doing it right.

Unfortunately, Bly uses the definition furnished by Debbie Weil, a well-known corporate blogging expert who still uses this misleading definition in her blog posts and her book. But Debbie doesn't stop there - she expands this definition and explains how and why blogs are powerful marketing tools for businesses. I guess Bob Bly didn't read the rest of her writing.

Bly makes some good points, however. The truth is that many professionals still don't get how to optimize a blog for business puposes. The Blogosphere is full of sloppy, unprofessional blogs written by some otherwise very professional people.

Proclamation: The Blog Squad denies that professional business blogs are online diaries. While we will make no effort to pass a law, or evoke penalties, beware! The next time we see you telling somebody that a blog is an "online diary," we will swoop down from the Blogosphere and slap you.

Here's a few scathing excerpts from Bly's blog posts:

"In my observation, there are two major problems with blogging as a business-building tool.
The first is that most of the blogs I encounter are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a particular topic of interest to the author, largely bereft of the kind of practical, pithy tips that e-zines, Web sites, and white papers offer.

"But with a blog, the reader has to go out and proactively look for it. And since your contributions to your blog may be irregular and unscheduled, he has no way of knowing when something new of interest has been added.

"The problem is that there is already too much content, and we don’t want or need more. Analysis, wisdom, insight, advice, strategies, ideas – yes. But raw information, data, or content – no. And from what I can see, blogs serve up almost none of the former, and tons of the later.

"Blogs are, by virtue of being a form of online diary, like diaries: rambling, incoherent, and more suited for private thoughts than public consumption.

"But most blogs seem to be the private idiosyncratic musings of an individual, without censure or editing of any kind. And the result is like porridge: a gloppy mess, tasteless, and not very satisfying."

To read what a few others say about Bob Bly's controversy-stirring stab to blogging, try Rich Brooks blog and a great post over at simplenomics blog.

Comments

[Debbie Weil]

Hey, I do *not* call business blogs "online diaries." Nor do I say that in my book: "The Corporate Blogging Book" (to be published Aug. 3, 2006 by Penguin Portfolio).

In fact I say just the opposite. That a business blog by definition can't be as revealing as an online journal.

Well I'm looking forward to debating you on this in person, Patsi! See you today at my 2 PM session at Publishers Marketing University here in D.C. - "Why Every Book Needs a Blog!" Thanks for joining me as a guest speaker.

[Mary Hunt]

Bob's missing a simple point - before there were corporations we had a "buyer" talking to a "seller". With layers of management, that one-to-one conversation was destroyed. Blogs are a way of putting a one-to-one experience back into the process. It's "personality" colors the way we view a company as much as a nice smile does in a face-to-face situation. You may not read the blog all the time, but the moment you want to get a better understanding of who that person or company is, you'll go to their blog.