The Corporate Weblog CounterManifesto

Thank you Robert for your comments back.

Only a few clarifications of who I am and where I stand:

1) Re: "I generally agree with her refactoring."

Robert, I am a man. A male Robin as Robin Hood was one.

2) Standards.

****Well taken. Let's see what everyone else NOT associated with a large software vendor think too...

3)12. Never change the URL of your weblog.

Scoble: "I disagree even more vehemently with this point. If you break permalinks you will get called out as being bad. And bad, indeed, you will be. That's what I was trying to get at.

Also, Technorati and Google analyze linking behavior. That analysis will break down if you change your URL. Pick one URL and stick with it. If at all possible. Now, I know there are times when you need to change, but you'll lose readership if you do it without redirecting. Right now I'm #50 on Technorati out of 3.5 million weblogs. #50! You think that'd last if I changed URLs? No.

Right now if you search Google for "Microsoft Geek" my blog comes up as the top link. You think that'd stay there if I changed URLs? No.

And with RSS News Aggregators it's even worse: I can't tell you how much it pisses me off to have to resubscribe to someone who has moved URLs (especially if they don't leave a "last post" that tells me where to find their new feed). Very often I decide the trouble is just not worth it and delete their folder and their feed. Is that the behavior you want me to do with your corporate weblog? No.

Your advice here is not good. Please reconsider."

****My advice is reliable because I have done it.
And you are witness to the fact that I have not disappeared from any of your radars.
Chill out, and re-read slowly what I wrote. It is not so radical after all. I am only saying that there are pretty many f...d up situations in which it would be the much better to change your URL than not.

Your technical considerations are also weak, as both Technorati and Google have been both been slick enough to rapidly readjust to any of my changes. Yes, I have lost heavy on link popularity and traffic for a few months...but that ain't gonna stop me from getting where I want to arrive...and that to me remains the driving force of all...your mission...not the being bad to the semantic Web or Google...this is a tool Robert...you now that.

4)13. If your life is in turmoil and you are unhappy, don't write.

***Agree with you fully.***

5) 14. If you don't have the answers say so.

Scoble: If you don't have the answers, the questions, or the issues clear in your mind, just don't write. Nobody is expecting this from you.

Sometimes people DO expect to get an answer. Listen to the question and answer sessions at the White House sometime. When you're a corporate blogger you should answer all the questions out there. People notice when you don't. They sure notice when I don't. For instance, right now there's a question hanging out there for me "what is Longhorn going to have that'll make it important to the marketplace?" If I don't answer that question, people will notice and that will start to get chattered about. If I answer it "I don't know yet, but I'm getting the answers and will have them early next year" then people will cut me some slack (note I said "some") and will see me next year. Not answering a question that's been asked is VERY dangerous. If you take that attitude, people will start wondering why you aren't paying attention to their concerns.

****Disagree fully*** I am not here to provide answers like you - my goal is to make people ask important questions to themselves, and to answer them in their own voice - this is where change lives.

6) >16. Never hide information.
>Provide as much information as you can from all the different sides complementing a thorny issue, and provide multiple and diverse opinions to your hottest discussions. Everyone, consciously or unconsciously hides information from view in the goal of bringing other information to the foreground. Be honest about your goals upfront and you won't have this ghost following you.

Scoble: I was trying to get at a specific point here. If you try to hide your weak point, generally people will see that and be attracted to it. It's best to admit your weaknesses up front.

7) >17. If you have information that may get you into a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting it, but do it fast.

>If you have information that is hot about a company make sure you are transparent, rich
in references and that you provide tangible verifiable facts in your blog reports. Don't accuse, report facts. When possible, inform the company involved before doing your number and then take your decisions from there.

Scoble: Here again, not good advice. ....

**** I must give in to the fact that you are the expert here. And I am not certainly a "corporate blogger". So let me gently bow to your good advice.

8) >18. Link to your competitors and say nice things about them.

>Link to valuable resources and credible people. Get it over with this corporate chicanery. Any other move will be seen as what it really is. Playing the traditional power game where transparency, honesty and credibility never make to the Top40.

Scoble: The goal of a blog is to become an authority on your topic. If you aren't willing to talk about EVERYTHING in your space, then you won't be a total authority.

This isn't a power game. It's about how one person becomes and authority on a topic.

Here, let's say you're wanting to become the authority on wineries in Sonoma. Do you only link to your own winery? Or, do you link to all the other great wineries in Sonoma too? Which one is more likely to be seen as an authority? Which one is most likely to be seen as "just a marketing site."

****Robert, to me it is not about linking to everyone out there. It is about linking for good reasons to whoever is relevant to the messages I am putting out.

Ethics is an important aspect of my way of doing this online publishing business and one of my strengths IS that I don't CLEARLY link to all of those that I should be linking to if I wanted to be an authority in those fields.

Check out Kolabora.com one more time and re-evaluate. The big players are ALL missing.

Does that make Stephanie Downs at Conferzone.com the "authority" in the field?

Listening....

Kudos to both Scoble and Robin. This has been a very intersting and knowledgable discussion. Learnt quite a bit. I'm organising a symposium on Corporate Blogging here in Chennai, India and am sure many of these points will be useful to the audience.

I generally agree with her refactoring. There are some points, though, that I think needed further work.
>4. Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.
>Support "open standards "
>and stay away from those who preach "standards" without ever making it very clear which standards they are
>referring to. (see Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer as a good examples of fake, dangerous "standards").
I disagree (and not just because I'm a Microsoft employee either -- my manifesto was written before I was a Microsoft employee). There are some times where defacto standards are perfectly OK.
RSS, for instance, is a defacto standard. It has not been submitted to the W3C or the IETF.
Macromedia Flash is another. I know of many, many funny things I've pointed to that are done in Flash. But Flash is not an "open standard." Neither is, ironically enough, the PDF document that Robin pointed to.
Java, yet another example.
Windows Media, Quicktime, or Real yet another set of examples.
Standards are more than just those that have been submitted to standards bodies. Was Google ever submitted to a standards body? Will Excel ever be? PowerPoint? Will the Macintosh ever be given to a standards body? How crazy do we have to get?
Keep your standards body off of my weblog! Thank you very much.
>12. Never change the URL of your weblog.
>Irrelevant. Do not fell prey to these marketing commandments. It is evident that no-one
>enjoys changing home or URL, but if the return provides much greater benefit, believe me,
>this is not going to kill your reputation, authority or reach in any significant way.
I disagree even more vehemently with this point. If you break permalinks you will get called out as being bad. And bad, indeed, you will be. That's what I was trying to get at.
Also, Technorati and Google analyze linking behavior. That analysis will break down if you change your URL. Pick one URL and stick with it. If at all possible. Now, I know there are times when you need to change, but you'll lose readership if you do it without redirecting. Right now I'm #50 on Technorati out of 3.5 million weblogs. #50! You think that'd last if I changed URLs? No.

Right now if you search Google for "Microsoft Geek" my blog comes up as the top link. You think that'd stay there if I changed URLs? No.
And with RSS News Aggregators it's even worse: I can't tell you how much it pisses me off to have to resubscribe to someone who has moved URLs (especially if they don't leave a "last post" that tells me where to find their new feed). Very often I decide the trouble is just not worth it and delete their folder and their feed. Is that the behavior you want me to do with your corporate weblog? No.

Your advice here is not good. Please reconsider.
>13. If your life is in turmoil and you are unhappy, don't write.
>Don't let your physical or psychological condition influence your ability to report and scout for good information.

Great advice, but I've found that many people find that advice to be extremely hard to follow at times. When your emotions are involved, sometimes it's better to take a few weeks away from the computer than to keep trying to do something.

Also, if you are no longer passionate about your topic, that will come through as well in subtle ways. You don't want to do your career harm. Take a break. Or, admit that you're no longer passionate and that you're switching careers or hobbies or whatever. It's also perfectly fine to admit you're going through something difficult. One of the bloggers I read wrote one day that his wife had been killed in a car wreck. Obviously he wasn't in any shape to keep blogging. His blogging changed. And I'm so happy he decided to share that with his readers. We quickly became friends and I'm a dedicated reader now. Why? Cause he admitted he's human.

>14. If you don't have the answers say so.
>If you don't have the answers, the questions, or the issues clear in your mind, just don't write. Nobody is expecting this from you.

Sometimes people DO expect to get an answer. Listen to the question and answer sessions at the White House sometime. When you're a corporate blogger you should answer all the questions out there. People notice when you don't. They sure notice when I don't. For instance, right now there's a question hanging out there for me "what is Longhorn going to have that'll make it important to the marketplace?" If I don't answer that question, people will notice and that will start to get chattered about. If I answer it "I don't know yet, but I'm getting the answers and will have them early next year" then people will cut me some slack (note I said "some") and will see me next year. Not answering a question that's been asked is VERY dangerous. If you take that attitude, people will start wondering why you aren't paying attention to their concerns.

>16. Never hide information.
>Provide as much information as you can from all the different sides complementing a thorny
>issue, and provide multiple and diverse opinions to your hottest discussions. Everyone,
>consciously or unconsciously hides information from view in the goal of bringing
>other information to the foreground. Be honest about your goals upfront and you won't have this ghost following you.

I was trying to get at a specific point here. If you try to hide your weak point, generally people will see that and be attracted to it. It's best to admit your weaknesses up front.

>17. If you have information that may get you into a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting it, but do it fast.
>If you have information that is hot about a company make sure you are transparent, rich
>in references and that you provide tangible verifiable facts in your blog reports.
>Don't accuse, report facts. When possible, inform the company involved before doing your number and then take your decisions from there.

Here again, not good advice. There's plenty of information that will get you into legal hot water. If you are blogging on behalf of a big company there almost certainly is a legal team. You better know what gets their goat. If you don't know, you better take one of them out to lunch and get caught up. There are many many things in business that'll get you in hot water. Particularly when you're a public company. If you don't understand the law at least at a cursory level, it's best to stay away from the blog. If you don't understand what slander, libel, and financial disclosure rules mean, then you better do some homework before you start a corporate blog.

>18. Link to your competitors and say nice things about them.
>Link to valuable resources and credible people. Get it over with this corporate chicanery.
>Any other move will be seen as what it really is. Playing the traditional
>power game where transparency, honesty and credibility never make to the Top40.

The goal of a blog is to become an authority on your topic. If you aren't willing to talk about EVERYTHING in your space, then you won't be a total authority.

This isn't a power game. It's about how one person becomes and authority on a topic.

Here, let's say you're wanting to become the authority on wineries in Sonoma. Do you only link to your own winery? Or, do you link to all the other great wineries in Sonoma too? Which one is more likely to be seen as an authority? Which one is most likely to be seen as "just a marketing site."

--Robert Scoble