Mucky Mucks Moving Forward
My only question is this: Why in the golly darn heck did it take Fred "The Ogre" Palowakski so long to identify more with the Nerds than with the Jocky Frat Boys? I mean, he had to realize that he was just a laughing stock. The pretty boys only kept him around as a side show freak show look at Ogre be crazy attraction. He was their belching, beer-guzzling pet. He was not valued as a human being, and eventually, he realized that he had feelings too. Perhaps it took so long because he was so entrenched in an ego-driven culture known to stick to its popular guns. It was easy not to self-examine and change. Well folks, the same can be said for the ego-driven, stuck in their traditional ways corporate executive culture, when it comes to blogging. Blogs have reached critical mass (I'm sure you've heard the numbers) and is no longer the "next big thing," and Debbie Weil is here with the first book to really "demystify and deconstruct the blogosphere for the corporate executive, the type who don't xwant to be bullied into adopting blogs as the next new thing." The title is The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right.
When you read Ms. Weil's book, it becomes painfully obvious why executives need to blog. And the key here is executives. At Microsoft, hundreds of employees are allowed to blog about the company, but can you imagine if Ballmer or Gates started a blog? Don't those two realize the ultimate viral marketing power that people of their stature could generate through blogging? Don't they realize that the community that would develop would be the ultimate focus group? And, instead of advertising and press releases, don't they realize how much free press they could get? They could get all of those things for just a mere shekel or two.
In the case of Microsoft, this is probably not the case, but I'm guessing a lot of Mucky Mucks have been a little intimidated by the technology aspect of blogging. Debbie Weil points out that they shouldn't be, because there's a reason blogs are well beyond the tipping point - Blogs are very easy to use. And on top of that, the blog is always online. It doesn't get recycled like yesterday's newspaper, or DVRed like a commercial. People can read blogs at their whimsy.
The Corporate Blogging Book, after making these points loud and clear (without being at all abrasive or know-it-all sounding), starts answering specific questions and becomes a clear and concise guide for starting, and running, a GREAT blog - great being the key. If you start a bad and boring blog, don't bother, because it will be worse than not blogging at all. Here are some of the very important questions Weil tackles. Some of them may not seem, at first, to be of significant importance, but imagine yourself (maybe you are one of these people) who has been tremendously skeptical of blogs:
- How much time will it take?
- What about the legal risks
- Who in my company should blog?
- What are the best corporate blogs out there?
The first chapter of the book, Top 20 Questions About Corporate Blogging, is actually available on Debbie's site as a free download. So I suggest to, and welcome, you all to head over there to take a read. As Weil says, it's really "meaty." Yes, Ms. Weil has a great sense of humor, and it is strewn across the pages of The Corporate Blogging Book.
The Offer:
Not only are we giving away a bunch of copies of this book (sorry, I can't exactly remember the exact amount, but I'll let you know in comments later on), but Debbie has agreed to give one lucky winner a 1/2 hour, one on one consult by phone. One of her consulting services is "CEO Blogging Coach," so if you want some expert professional help, click that little button right down there and answer a couple questions that are essential to the advancement of civilization.
-Make sure to search around this site for a while to check out the Kirkus review, the New York Times article that the book is quoted in, and you can even listen to a couple podcast and check out pictures of the book release party in D.C. (full of heavy hitters).
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