CGM Authenticity & Abuse

Since my last posting on why people blog I have run across a number of conversations regarding who should blog, CGM abuse and related topics that concern me. Blogging is in jeopardy of losing it's authenticity. As blogging becomes more widely used for marketing purposes, there is a danger that it's real value of conversations will become polluted with dishonest marketing techniques.

This is outlined well in Pete Blackshaw's recent posting "Spam, Popups and CGM Abuse" and subsequent article in Ad Age. Here, Pete describes the dangers of marketing "jumping on the CGM bandwagon...needlessly alienate consumers. It's unfamiliar terrain and credibility is at stake if marketers and agencies jump into the space recklessly."

As a specific data point on this topic, I am much more likely to read the blog posting than the article due to the overwhelming jumping, annoying Internet ads that surround his words on the Ad Age website. Ironically, the combination of his blog posting and article illustrates the value of peer to peer communications vs. traditional marketing.

Subsequently I ran across a posting on Forrester's marketing blog titled
Ok so I'm a mercenary and a blog discussion on Unica's website "The Marketers Consortium" that posed the question "Should CMOs blog"?

I am bothered by all this discussion about who should blog, how often you should blog, how marketing should be advertising on blogs....should, should, should. What happened to the Naked Conversations? Why are we assigning all these rules to blogging.

There is no doubt that blogs and consumer generated media are a changing force in the world of marketing. But the true value of the blog is the unfiltered, honest feedback from customers, prospects, partners, consumers, or whoever matters to you. If all these rules are applied don't we jeopardize the true value of blogs?

As I collected my thoughts for this posting, I found a posting on Web 2.0 and crossing the chasm from Shel Israel. Shel is someone who has dedicated a great deal of time to the issue of blogging and in this post he states, "Blogging is not about a ratings war. It's about a tool that is important because it scales people's abilities to have conversations." To this most recent posting I say... "AMEN BROTHER!"