Comments on: You Can’t Take The Personal Out Of Blogging

By: Cory O'Brien

Cory O'Brien — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:10:57 +0000

I think you nailed it when you said that “You also take away some of their power when you taint their audience’s trust. A super star writing on their own blog is authentic. A super star writing on a corporate blog is marketing.”

Perhaps Forrester figures that even with the reduced trust, they’re getting enough return on their new blog ‘marketing’ to risk loosing a few super stars, but if there are no satellite writers out there pulling new readers towards Forrester and their blogs, how do they expect to grow their audience?

By: Aussiewebmaster

Aussiewebmaster — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:08:28 +0000

Good example of the portability of things – your twitter name came with you – just like Rebecca Kelley’s when she left moz – somethings you can’t chain down but people will try

By: Jeff Harbert

Jeff Harbert — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:56:27 +0000

I've been saying to people for a while that you can't remove the personal from anything because people are what make everything work. Everything is personal. The old excuse of, "It's only business" doesn't hold water anymore. If you place more importance of the professional over the personal, you will ultimately fail.

By: Cliff Condon

Cliff Condon — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:21:53 +0000

Forrester says it wants more analysts to blog to enhance their reputation and the company’s. http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/forrester-wants-more-analysts-using-social-tools.html

By: Kevin Palmer

Kevin Palmer — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:50:58 +0000

I think it is a mistake but I get why they are doing it.

They basically funded Jeremiah becoming a star. He had his own branded site. He was writing and creating content on their dime, they were flying him to speak at conferences as a representative of their company, and basically helped accelerated him to be bigger than them. With him leaving I am sure he also took a sizable client base away with him that wanted to continue working with and couldn’t or new clients that went where he was because of the name recognition. (All that money that they invested plus all that money they lost… was it worth the years that he worked with them? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.)

You are seeing this happen with PR and Marketing Firms where people that don’t have a piece of the firm have branded themselves on the company’s dime and then spun themselves off into their own consulting position. (While these people probably can’t take clients with them because of non compete clauses but imagine the clients they lost because they wanted to work with the person that left.)

These companies are left with divisions or departments without the person that became their voice, drove their traffic, and was one of their main selling points.

So I guess in their mind this is their only recourse. But because this wasn’t their policy on day one it is going to come back and really look bad and potentially really bite them on the ass.

By: Patrick Boegel

Patrick Boegel — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:19:44 +0000

Functionally, I never understood the purpose or mindset behind the “forrestor blogs”. They do not even offer robust share functionality which seems completely counter to one of the primary end benefits to having a blog, that being people can agree or disagree with your point of view and then share that opinion with their connections. Unless of course they find the user base of digg and delicious really as a massive funnel. Augie more than hints that things are going to be redone over their in more ways than one, but when he talks about content aggregation as key to SEO, he can’t be blind to the idea that they are now competing with the likes of Charlene and especially Jeremiah in the web/social strategy space. And there is an uphill battle for them to compete with the audience, linking, sharing and participation in a big way. Despite Forrestor’s brand name, they can’t change that without the same developed effort.

By: Michael Durwin

Michael Durwin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:50:42 +0000

Forrester did what many foolish brands are still trying to do, the old standbys: drive traffic to the website, control the brand, control the message, run everything by the lawyers.
It will fail, they’ll lose credibility, traffic won’t increase (it’ll actually decrease because there won’t be all those employee blogs out there driving it), the part of their brand that Forrester doesn’t control, perception, is now saying that they’re chumps, they’re “the man”, they don’t “get it”. Their misguided brand managers will suck all of the personality from their blogs, the bean counters will strip out anything they thing they can charge for out, and the lawyers will strip any opinions (so they don’t risk a lawsuit by exercising their rights.

By: Srinivas Rao

Srinivas Rao — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:28:34 +0000

Lisa,

When I first found your blog, I had no idea it was a corporate blog. That’s why I loved it and subscribed to it right away. It was only after reading for a while that I realized it was actually part of your company.

By: Bob Weber

Bob Weber — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:25:01 +0000

Absolutely, the Outspoken blog is less filtered, and I think that’s usually good.:)

The problem is that Forrester’s trying to put the cat back in the bag. They have all these Stars who have created brands and built audiences, and now they’re trying to stuff them back under one corporate umbrella. it’s a less powerful way of doing things. Back before blogs, we didn’t know better.

Maybe, but from a company perspective it can make sense. Their interest is in building a business, not helping the world at large. Going after stars and bringing them into the organization is like signing free agents rather than trying to bring up y our own draft picks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but if the price is right bringing the experienced talent can have a huge impact. Times may have changed, but people are still people. What worked before will likely work again.

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:13:45 +0000

Thanks for chiming in. Your views obviously offer a valuable look at what’s important to the team at Forrester. I think you’re right about Charlene and Jeremiah being smart enough to realize their own value. They were Linchpins.