In October, on cvillenews.com, I encouraged local businessfolk to take to blogging. I think this might have been a mistake.
Several Charlottesville businesses have taken to blogging in the past few weeks whose blogs are just terrible. Others started out promising, but turned out to be lame. These blogs are nothing more but serially-posted advertisements. Nobody wants to read these things. They’re badly written puffery that offer no insight to readers and no honest assessments of the business, the industry, or its products. They’re boring.
Now, if a business wants to run a crappy blog, I figure that’s their business. But since I run the Charlottesville blog aggregator, this puts me in an awkward position. I’ve included every area blog submitted since I started the aggregator last year, because there’s been no reason not to. Now I need to start acting as an editor, deciding what does or doesn’t qualify as a decent blog. What a pain in the ass.
So this is my plea. If you’re running a business blog and it sucks, stop it from sucking. If you’re considering starting a business blog, ask yourself if anybody really wants to read today’s price list or your marketing-speak.
Sean Tubbs and I will be addressing the Central Virginia chapter of the American Marketing Association on this topic next month. I hope that any Charlottesville business owner considering blogging will attend.
Recently I was thinking about how PlanetPlanet, the software which drives the cvilleblogs.com aggregator, could be augmented with a moderation scheme. While any approach would have it drawbacks, if there were a thousand blogs (this is entirely possible, I think) in our area it might be nice to know which ones on average were promoted or demoted by the community. My inclination in these situations is to leverage the social network of users already in place. People will demote puffery pretty quickly.
How can several areas of the state of Virginia call themselves Central Vitginia accurately?
Lynchburg has ALWAYS been called Central Virginia. How can Charlottesville be Central Virginia also?
Geographically the center of the state is around Farmvile. Is Priince Edward County Central Virginia too ?
Where IS the mythical Central Virginia?
I can hear you talk regularly and read your blog regularly, will I learn anything new by attending the seminar?
I figure Farmville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, and the region in between is all Central Virginia. But I’ll be damned if Richmond is “Central Virginia.” I don’t know what in the world those people are thinking. You can’t go much farther east from Richmond without falling into the ocean. That sure ain’t “central.”
I happen to know that you, Jennifer, would personally learn nothing from this talk.
Another thought I had – I know I dont have to share them all, anyway… maybe Jim & Brian set the bar too high? Perhaps the other blogs are mediocre compared to the superior Jim and Brian blogs? OK I live in fear my blawg (coming soon) will not be interesting so I suppose I will learn something if I attend this seminar of yours.
Hey Waldo,
Don’t forget our Chamber’s Business News Log (BLOG). I don’t think enough people know about it.
http://www.cvillechamber.com/business_news
Running since 2004, It is straight news, no commentary or witty little stories, but it’s not boring either and at least provides a running view of individual business activity in our community. I’d love for more of our Chamber member enterprises to provide me with their business news.
I’m totally down with straight news—I think it’s great. It makes for something that doesn’t pretend to be a blog; nowhere on your site does it even say “blog,” because it’s really just a chronological listing of factual accounts of the events of the day. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is, and so it’s a great resource for anybody looking to keep up with local business news.
Waldo, maybe your business blog show should go statewide. Contact me about some potential–I’m at the Virginia Business Information Center.