Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Blogging Planet: show me the content!

Elizabeth Albrycht, co-producer of the New Communications Forum, Christophe Ducamp – Founder of Elanceur, Guillaume du Gardier, founder of the CEO Bloggers Club and Neville Hobson, a communication practitioner who blogs daily at NevOn have launched Blogging Planet.

Blogging Planet offers consulting and training for corporations interested in using blogs, wiki or podcast to support their communication.

While I love their concept of "ecosystem", I was stuck by the following comment: “it is the medium -- the network you build -- that matters, not the message -- the content.”

While they may purposely downplay the value of network over content to emphasize their point, I would argue that good content is still key to create a good network.

Making corporations aware of the ecosystem surrounding them is an excellent thing and many executives will be fascinated to see how messages are relayed and amplified in the blogosphere. The question is what role these corporations want to play in this ecosystem? It obviously depends on their communication needs but most companies are looking to benefit from the thought leadership deriving from authoring or aggregating content.

Increased links to a company websites or blogs will certainly increase search engine ranking but why should someone link to a website at the first place if there is no interesting content there to be found?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, we are purposely downplaying the role of the content vs. the network. But if you read further down in our description of our services, you find: "Content production is a tool we teach our clients to use..."

We don't ignore content; clearly it is important! But we focus on a larger issue, which in our minds is building your network. Content is only one of the tools to use in that endeavor.

I am glad you like our concept of "ecosystem". Thanks for your post.

Joël Céré said...

Hello Elisabeth,

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Totally get your point about downplaying content to get your interlocutors to approach the value of blogging from a different angle. I am still convinced though that if it is extremely difficult to build and especially sustain a network without adding value to it. And this value is either content, content aggregation or being a relay. The latter has little value for corporations and the former two still require a content strategy to go hands-in-hands with a networking strategy.

Having said all of that, I sincerely think that your expertise in the blogging field will be invaluable to many companies and I hope it will contribute to push blogs high in the communication agenda. Well done and all the best with Blogging Planet.

Joel