Blog Council Says Feedback Schmeedback

B.L., my friend, do you still describe yourself as a "Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker?"

Is this from your home page?

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Andy Sernovitz

BL,

First,let me start by saying that I have been subscribed to your blog for well over a year. It was one of the first blogs I added in Bloglines and it has been extremely helpful in my career.

As the representative from AccuQuote, one of the founding members of the Blog Council, I completely understand a certain degree of skepticism from the blosphere regarding the formation of this group. After all, most of the companies involved have a history of speaking to their customers versus engaging in dialogue with them.

As someone who has seen the positive financial impact of using their company blog to engage in dialogue with customers, I'm excited about the ability to share these customer centric approaches with other companies. Of course, all of the members companies are going to need to put their money where their mouth is and demonstrate they they can apply best practices with their own company blogs as well as throughout their own network of employee bloggers.

Although I feel that AccuQuote has been using its blog the "right" way, I'm always looking to improve it to best benefit our customers. That's the benefit that I'm looking for with Blog Council, and exactly what the other member companies are looking for as well.

While I respect your opinions, I urge you to take a "prove it" approach and challenge the member companies of the Blog Council to fully join the conversation with consumers.

Andy - yes, I have a proven track record helping big companies add social media to their corporate communications to build community, traffic and sales over the past 10 years

And your point is what, exactly?

As an "outsider" to this council, I feel you bring about some obvious pitfalls to the council that I have struggled to understand as well.

While sharing within a similar audience may be a "safe" alternative, allowing different angles and viewpoints from experts in the area seems like it would be beneficial to the club, as well as help the club understand a little more about transparency...

I could go on, but I'll just link to my post here.

I appreciate this post. Your comment regarding community and collaboration is important. To that point, I'm glad Sean and Andy posted comments. Their comments brought to mind two things: 1) a well-meaning government council that’s so intent on control and right vs. wrong that they miss the point anyway; 2) that everyone's-seen-it movie scene about the couple in counseling—the scene where the man just hears what he wants to. I'd like to see members of the council hear that you use the word "control" in your post and consider what your use of that word may mean for them; i.e. that saying blogging "the 'right' way" in their comment implies control or that "B.L., my friend," in this context is condescending. Regarding the idea that major blogs suffer from a "general level of pessimism and meanness," all of the professional blogs I read are at least useful, if not also smart, positive and comment provoking. None of them are mean. And all of them determined their own best practice, which I respect and reward by continuing to read then and comment.

B.L., I don't want to rehash what I've already written about on my blog, but if you want to check it out, it's here:

http://tinyurl.com/2ha9cr

But.

As someone who has actually been on the inside of a large organization, trying to learn the ins and outs of social media/community and how it applied to the business and felt "alone in the woods", I wish a group like this had existed.

When you (and many others) say things like: "Translation: 'we’re talking about blogs, not listening to them.'", I fear that you're showing a certain lack of understanding of the internal realities of corporate community folks (which is odd, considering your background) and/or you're making a massively bold, broad, and unfair assumption that the two are mutually exclusive.

Listening is crucial, no question about it. But what do you do after you've listened? You act. As a social media consultant, you're hired to help clients understand WHAT to do as much as WHY they need to do it, no?

I'm curious, your bio (as mentioned by Andy above) says that you help client companies build blog traffic. When you meet with those clients, are those meetings held in public or behind closed doors?

Perhaps so many "experts" are up in arms about this is because they don't want potential clients to solve their own problems? (Or maybe this is just ME being overly cynical now...)

Jake - I don't have an issue with a group meeting behind closed doors to help each other. Usually that's called a round table or industry association, etc.

What I and others object to is that they started a closed community and then publicized it. Or don't you see the dichotomy?

It's an arrogant thing to do. And it's just absurd for a council on blogging not to have a blog.

I am many others who work in social media marketing have progressed far beyond blogs, which are simply one tool in the marketing toolbox.

If this group had any understanding of the landscape, it would be called something like the New Media Marketing Council or the Social Media Marketing Council.

The name alone suggests short-sighted planning and a fundamental lack of understanding of the terrain. And that reflects on "my friend" the founder and the members.

So basically your problems are:

* No blog
* The name
* The announcement

These all seem fairly silly things to be *this* upset about.

No blog - personally I would have liked to have seen this too, but I also acknowledge that it was a directional decision. Agree or not, it's not a moral requirement for them to have one, considering the group is private.

The name - I actually talked to Andy before launch (I'm not involved in the group other than some open discussion with Andy pre-launch) about expanding the scope of the group to be New Media. His desire was (not to speak for him) to stay focused. As the guy who keeps saying "blogging is a metaphor, not an activity", I completely agree that the toolbox has a collection of useful tools. But I'm not going to rail on their decision to focus on one specific tool. It's not a failure because they choose to focus on something there is an audience for.

The announcement - I've commented elsewhere, I have zero problem with them announcing publicly. They don't have a "full" community built yet, and how else do they build to a critical mass? Every social group, as you likely well know, has a sweet spot for membership base size. In a group like this, 5 or 6 is far from critical mass.

Besides, if they *hadn't* announced this group, they would have been flamed 10 ways from Sunday trying to hide their "devious intentions".

Jake - Seems to me you're the one who's upset. Have a nice night.

That seems fairly dismissive. If you're not interested in continuing the discussion, I can respect that. Just say that, don't toss it back at me as though I have some sort of "problem".

Hey, what's a little anarchy among friends?

Ad when "they" [read Blog Council] get it the big Ah-ha will be "why didn't we think of this sooner?"

The simple-minded "you're showing a certain lack of understanding of the internal realities of corporate community folks" tells me people in the "cultcha" are still talking to themselves, which is why, just mebbe, BL and i work for ourselves.

And get things done for our clients, large and small.

NIH is alive and well. Evermore.

i think the issue is an understanding of the purpose of this group. If the purpose is just to share ideas among some top players, i don't see an issue. If they think sharing between themselves and only themselves is truly helpful, great. (i question whether it is, but that's their choice) that they publicized it is not a big issue either, anytime big time players get together it's kind of a big deal. However, they need to make sure they don't try to act as the authority on the topic of blogging. They are a highly specialized group sharing thoughts among themselves... that's about it.

Andy's post here however was unprofessional, and unnecessary as B.L. makes no secret who she is. IMHO this casts a bit of the shadow on his authority in the social media realm

Isaac -

You got it right.

The Blog Council has no intention of becoming any sort of authority over the blogosphere. Never said it, never planned it ... not really sure where that idea is coming from.

We are entirely about supporting those people inside big companies who truly get it. We are a place they can share and learn from each other.

We also have a huge listening program in place, with non-stop presentations by outside experts and independent bloggers.

Andy Sernovitz
Blog Council

Andy - Great to see that you've added listening to the mix.

Your listening appears to be selective. Isaac also totally got it when he said:
"Andy's post here however was unprofessional, and unnecessary as B.L. makes no secret who she is. IMHO this casts a bit of the shadow on his authority in the social media realm"

So Andy: are these "non-stop presentations by outside experts and independent bloggers." paid, or are they speaking for free?