Thanks for your call. And thanks for engaging in the conversation. You say that you don’t know how to answer my concern, but then you are doing it — you are engaging in the conversation that the market is having about your idea. I think that is the right way to do it. So lets take the conversation a little further (as I said to you on the phone, conversations evolve). You write in your comment on this blog about what your company does — “organize events and associations.” I can take this at face value, because I have spoken with you and we know people in common so you have a reputation that I can refer to. But the market will read your website which is titled:

“Welcome to GasPedal! Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy, Training, and Best Practices”

This is not a personal attack. I am not questioning your honesty or your intentions. I am pointing out that there is a problem in your communications about what you are doing.

I think it is great that you are engaging. Please keep doing so. There is a bunch of stuff that can be set straight in the market about your ideas, and doing so will change the course of the conversation.

I’m not sure how to answer your concern, except to say that this is what my company does. We organize events and associations. I would expect that most conferences you attend and most groups you join were started by a similar person or organization.

It is important to note is that GasPedal is only the staff of the organization, not members. We manage the back office, the members lead the issues and discussion. We have 3 people working full time 12-hour days to put this together.

Considering that I called you personally within 10 min of your email to me to responded to your concerns, and we (GasPedal and all the Blog Council members) have been commenting openly on the 200+ blog posts, I apologize if we haven’t had a chance to join each and every conversation.

But we’re tying.

Andy

After all, another entry from the Blog Council’s FAQ states that the Blog Council will help big company with:

“What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?”

So is the correct way to ignore? To say “This is an argument we can’t win, so lets not engage.” ?

I AGREE with you. The Blog Council is a good idea. More big companies should be blogging. And they should be spending time talking with each other about best practices.

I think there is something fundamentally wrong with one small vendor (Gas Pedal) creating an entity, charging money to a bunch of big companies to belong, and then trumpeting through a press release that they have created a private club, don’t bother applying. And the biggest problem comes when that company (Gas Pedal) then does not engage in the public discussion that they created.

I told this to Andy when he called me privately on the phone. The criticism that is being leveled of this effort is NOT that big companies should not blog (we all think they should); it is NOT that they don’t have different problems (we all think they DO); and it is NOT that they need to listen to us about how to do it (we’d like them to hear what we have to say, but they have to want to listen). NO, the problem with this whole exercise is that it exposes what is fundamentally wrong with one part of the business communities approach to blogging. That it is just another marketing tactic to be exploited. As Larry Weber says in his book of the same name, “Marketing TO the Social Web”

The best thing these companies could learn from this experience is that it is time to start having conversations WITH markets and that this is what blogging will let them accomplish.

In a different life, I participated in one such organization, the National Council of State Housing Agencies (U.S.), http://www.ncsha.org. It’s not widely known, but state housing agencies actually have a fair amount of money at their disposal, and lots of vendors — especially financial types — want to stay close to this market. NCSHA has 55 state members (50 states + DC + territories) and no fewer than 350 associate members. At meetings, the associate members are often frozen out of certain let-our-hair-down roundtables, but they are welcome in other workshops. The system works well. And it sure lets the primary members know that someone is interested in them when the vendor poinies up for the associate member fee.

$0.02 from a guy getting back into the blogging world.

I applaud the formation of this group and well and hope they succeed. We will all benefit if they do.

Blog on!
Rick Calvert
CEO & Co-founder
BlogWorld & New Media Expo

ps. You didn’t hurt my feelings 8)

Thanks for the great post. You’ve done a better job than anyone of summarizing the need for this group and the challenges we face.

By vendors, we mean companies selling blogging services. It’s hard to talk about how to do something when people in the room are selling you their perspective.

Thanks for feedback and helping us improve.

Cheers,

Andy