Doc Searls on the Blog Ethos

The Doc Searls Weblog : Thursday, February 24, 2005
Excerpt :
"There are other metaphors that play as well. Branding, for example, was borrowed by advertising from the cattle industry, to name the burn-in effects of repeated soap advertisements on the brains of radio listeners.
  We mix these when we talk about "delivering an experience" or "building a page." Which is fine. The problems come when we lose track of how deeply different some of these frames really are.
  For example, "writing a blog" and "building a site" are as different as talking and nailing up drywall. "Starting a conversation" and "building a brand" are as different as saying hello and yelling your name.
  When we said, in The Cluetrain Manifesto, that markets are conversations, we meant that conversation trumped all marketing jive. Conversation, and the relationships that follow, are what really matter in real marketplaces — which are places (whether in virtual or physical space) where people meet to do business and make culture. You can't "deliver" conversation. It's not "content." It's not about branding, or media, or building anything other than what conversation does best (better than "messages"): making and changing minds.
  Blogging is personal. The voices you hear in blogs are personal ones, not corporate ones, even when they serve corporate purposes.
  Yet companies have character too, just as individuals do. The difference is that companies themselves cannot speak. So, what you want are individual speakers, and individual blogs, that express and reveal what's best about their companies' character. That's what the best "corporate blogs" do.
  If you can come up with strategies for that, cool."

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