Freigeben über

Blogging as cost-cutting measure?

  • Artikel

I'm not sure that's a good idea. From Silicon Valley Watcher, via Neville Hobson, IBM is encouraging employees to blog to evangelize products to increase revenues to reduce lay-offs. Boy, that's kind of setting the bar high. No pressure though, IBM bloggers...have fun out there ; )

Call me a purist, but if you want to blog for a reason beyond having conversations with customers (however you define them) them it's going to be a tedious activity and will fizzle for shizzle. Isn't it a little overly ambitious to tie blogging to some pie-in-the-sky results?  I mean, it's a grass-roots thing...no point in putting the cart before the horse. Baby steps, IBM, baby steps.

I mean blogging is interesting (well, it can be...you decide), but it's not the answer to everything! Why does it have to be the answer to everything? Is it just me or would it have been wiser to announce this blogging initiative before financial results?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2005
    Heather, that goal as reported in the Silicon Valley Watcher story - which also linked it to reducing advertising and marketing costs - was denied quite quickly by IBM. Indeed, they've clearly said they won't reduce such budgets.

    Subsequently, the Silicon Valley Watcher story was updated:

    http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/05/can_blogging_bo.php
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2005
    first poster...that's exactly the point. Not particularly eloquent, but you got it. If you want to call caring about customers a religion, then OK. Sign me up.

    Neville-thanks for the update and link. I feel much better now ; )
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2005
    Martha-I definitely don't claim to like watching the Donald. Seriously.

    I'm not sure how I feel about people secretly marketing to me...have to think about that. My first inclination would be to say th them "hey freak, I wasn't looking at your phone!" ; )
  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2005
    Next time you are at a public event, say an Arts Festival, and you see someone with a cool new camera phone or PDA and they offer to demo it for you since they "happened to notice you checking it out..." It's a popular form of marketing and companies like Motorola and Nokia often hire college students to demo new products. The personal testimonial sells the product and you'll never know that you were pitched. Don't see any difference in the corporate blog, but I don't believe everything I read. Caveat emptor! For example, come on...you actually like watching The Donald? ;-)