The End of a Blog

I’m not sure what this means to corporate blogs in general, but Miller (now MillerCoors) is discontinuing their blog.  Click the link to see their reasons.

I liked the BrewBlog.  It definitely had a Miller slant to it, but I think they did about as good of a job that a brewer could do to represent the industry as a whole.  It was written and managed by a former AdAge writer and I thought it was a pretty forward thinking move when they started it a few years ago.

MillerCoors says that they are going to launch new communications tool in the near future, but here’s my take:

The brewblog didn’t ignite buzz in the marketplace and their was minimal feedback from distributors and retailers.  This along with a couple solidly entrenched beer industry news sources already out there made the blog susceptible to getting whacked.

I’ll take my opinion one step further and say that Miller didn’t adequately promote the BrewBlog’s existence enough to give it a chance or drive any traffic.  Blogs are still new technology to most of the population, so if you want distributors and retailers to use a tool like this, they need to be trained to use it and understand the value.

If they step it up and innovate some new communication tools, I’ll eat my words.  But I hope they consider the “how” and not just the “why” this time around.

Journal Writing, Not Blogging?

We’re getting a lot of encouragement to keep a journal during our EMBA program. A journal?  What’s that? I joke.

I was reading a journal created by some dude in one of the previous “cohorts” (that their fancy word for class) and he gives a few reasons why journaling is better than blogging:

Blogs can get lost in the online sea of bits and bytes.

Yeah, there are new blogs online everyday.  And I guess the shitty ones get lost in the sea, but who cares?

Blogs have a temporary nature to them.

Not for me.  A journal that I’ll want to throw out the next time I move for the sake of getting rid of clutter feels temporary to me.  A blog feels way more permanent to me.  It’s online, for as long as I want it – taking up zero space.

Blogs can be edited and impressions altered.

Yeah, ok.  But a true blogger doesn’t do that.

Blogs can be taken off the web in a moments’ notice, never to be found again.

Yeah, and I can burn a journal in a moment’s notice.  Or worse yet, lose it.

Blogs are a dime a dozen.

Yeah, there are a lot of blogs out there, 99.99% of which don’t mean jack-shit to me.  But the ones that I read are really important to me.  It’s my way of keeping track of what’s important to me, or finding out new technology, keeping up with friends and learning from others.  So the real difference is that journals are good for being private and that’s all well and good – but at this point in time, I like sharing my thoughts with the people who give a rat’s ass.  Maybe my stupid little thoughts will have some kind of affect on them.

There’s a lot of talk about collaboration in class and a journal seems to be the complete opposite approach.  Sounds like “fear of a blogging planet” to me.

And I don’t want to keep a journal because my handwriting sucks.  So there.

Are You Too Busy to Blog or Do You Just Not Believe in It?

I was cleaning up my RSS feeds on Bloglines today and found three agencies that have either:

• really started mailing it in and have gone to just posting meaningless bullshit
• have given up on blogging altogether

This reminds me of 6-7 years ago when companies would bid on building a website for a brand I was working on and promised to do an awesome job.  But they had a shitty website themselves and claimed it was because they were “too busy building awesome website for their clients to have a good one for themselves”.  I seriously heard this all the time.

Now it’s 2008 and blogging is all the rage and I’m sure every agency is recommending this to their clients and potential clients. (I actually don’t know this for fact, since we do almost everything in house).  Yet, these agencies have clearly demonstrated that they don’t really know how to do it themselves.

I’ll admit, blogging takes some discipline.  And it’s not easy to come up with something to write about everyday.  But if you’re going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk.

So what’s the deal?  Do they not know how to do it? Not believe in it? Or are they really THAT busy?  i doubt it’s the latter because it seems like the busy agencies blog.

A Call for Brand-Side Bloggers

Is it me or almost all “Marketing Bloggers” from the agency/consulting side?  Maybe I’m wrong.

This is a call for client/brand side bloggers:

1. Are you out there?

2. Start a blog! As a client-side blogger, I want to hear what you have to say.

No More Long Blogs

I’ve pretty much phased reading uber long blogs out of my life.  I just don’t have the attention span and it’s got me worried if I will be able to ever read a book again because I have started to “skim” so much.  If I’m not reading long blogs, then I bet other people aren’t either.

So, no more long blog posts here.  I’m not talking Twitter short (140 characters) – I’m talking less than 500 words.  Probably closer to 200.  If I can’t get the job done in less than 500 words, then it’s not a good enough idea/concept to put in a blog.

(FYI  – This is 110 words)

Use Jim Rome’s Advice When You Twit

I was in the process of writing a blog about how NOT to Twitter and I found myself using Jim Rome’s advice – Have a Take and Don’t Suck.  And when I stopped and thought about it, that was really all that needed to be said.  That’s exactly how people should approach Twitter.

For those of you that don’t listen to sports talk radio (and good for you), let me explain this a little further.

Jim Rome is a cocky sports talk radio host.  Compared to other sports talk radio shows, his show is fast paced, opinionated and arrogant.  In a typical three hour show, he let’s his listeners talk for maybe 30 minutes and he makes it clear that he only does that when he has to.  He would much prefer to spout out his own opinions and ideas, interview an athlete or read hand-selected emails.  Everyday, when he gives out the phone number to call into the show, he tells his listeners to :

Have a take and don’t suck. 

If callers suck, he hangs up.  He does his best not to let the callers kill his show with boring, meaningless calls that lead to people changing the station.

This is how I approach Twitter.  If you suck, I leave/change the station.

Here’s my “Jim Rome approach” to what I am looking for in a Twitterer that I follow:

• Have a Take: have an opinion, drop some knowledge on me or be funny.
• Don’t suck: Enough said.

In return, I’ll do my best not to suck either.

Learned Me Some Bloggin’

I started The Turkey Sandwich Report right after Thanksgiving ’06.  I had no idea how to start a blog, what I would write or what the hell a “widget” was.  Since then, TSR has gone on to become the most respected Turkey Sandwich blog in the ENTIRE WORLD, and I have learned how to blog.

You say: “So, what’s your point?”

Actually, I have three points.  14 months later:

• It took me less than an hour to get this blog online and it even has some functioning widgets.
• I am a paid blogger for the Denver Post, which has allowed me to pay off my rather steep gambling debts.
• We’ve launched some cool web 2.0 stuff at work and are widely viewed as a brewery who has it going on when it comes to online marketing.

All because I started a stupid blog about Turkey Sandwiches.  That’s my point.