Recently I attended an IMC-AZ event and Alan Weiss made a special appearance in which his comments about blogging were that "Blogs are worthless" and "nobody reads them". I blogged my response here and here.
Alan left a comment on the IMC-AZ blog, which for fairness I’ll repeat here:
I'm sorry you're hurting so much. Several people sent me this entry, embarrassed by your comments after my pro bono speech. I said in that presentation that everyone is free to ignore me. At their level of the profession, however. blogging is not valuable marketing because their buyers don't read blogs. You ran up to me afterwards to protest this! I give my professional opinion, which you seem to resent because you disagree with it. Let's see how professional you are by printing this.
To the contrary Alan, I did not find your comments hurtful at all. Those of us engaged in blogging evangelism encounter similar comments all the time. I’m sorry that some of your colleagues found my comments embarrassing. In contrast, some of mine were very complimentary.
I did however view your comments as ill-informed. Since you made your comments in a public forum, I felt it appropriate to reply in a public forum. Furthermore, I viewed your comments as an attack upon the forward-thinking leadership of IMC-AZ and their decision to embrace blogging. It was therefore appropriate, I felt, that my response be on IMC-AZ’s blog as well as my own.
I stand by my reporting of your original quote which was "Nobody reads them." The fact that you are commenting is, I believe, sufficient refutation. You are within the sphere of influence – though probably only indirectly - of someone who reads the IMC-AZ blog.
If – instead of “nobody reads them” - you are clarifying and saying that "buyers don’t read blogs", I will grant you that the decisions of most purchasing agents are not influenced by the blogosphere. The actual decision-makers however, do read blogs. I think that’s irrefutable.
I can understand how – at your stage of your career – blogging may have marginal value to you personally as a marketing tool. Most consultants however are not in your enviable position. Done well, blogging can achieve for a consultant what even large firms with millions of marketing dollars cannot achieve.
Consider also that Corporate America is increasingly populated by Generation X. The Gen X’ers don’t read The New York Times, Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. They get their information from social media. If you are not there then you don’t exist.
And your characterization of our dialog that day is not entirely accurate. As you left the podium to the rear of the room, I approached you, handed you my business card, and said, "I respectfully disagree with your comments about blogs." (and that is an exact quote)
You replied, "You’re free to disagree if you want."
Sensing that you were not interested in engaging in meaningful dialog on the subject at that time I politely replied, "And you are entitled to your opinion." With that, I returned to my seat.
In regards to seeing if I am professional enough to publish your comment: Of course I published it (and in fact I’ve published it in two places). That is what blogging is all about: engaging in conversation, accepting input (positive and negative), accepting criticism with grace, and providing an opportunity for the airing of opposing points of view. In fact, I encourage you, Alan, to continue this dialog with me here. I would be very interested in seeing the data you have to substantiate your claim that "buyers don’t read blogs."
In closing, I realize that I can probably never convince you of the power and usefulness of blogging. I will simply echo a couple of thoughts from Shel Israel, one of the leading thinkers on the subject and co-author of probably the best book on the subject of business blogging: You are obviously a blogging atheist. I can respect that, but instead of spending my time on the atheists, I’ll work on the agnostics instead. I just want to warn you that while you are - metaphorically speaking – walking along the beach enjoying the sunshine, a tsunami is just over the horizon and it’s headed your way. You still have time to get out of the way or ride the wave.
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