Okay. So.

Blogging can sometimes be a humbling experience. I wrote a post yesterday about John Janstch post, If You’re Not Participating in Social Media. I am not going to link to my post.. just scroll down. Long story short, I went off on John for throwing out numbers instead of talking about writing authenticity and using a corporate blog as a communication tool rather than a social tool. John commented on the post:

A couple points of clarification – selling to “older” employees are your words, not mine – I simply said to folks who were not convinced social media made sense for an organization. Second, I agree with your point completely and have written about it often – so, in that context what I was saying was use the data to convince people that it’s worth developing a strategy around.

Okay, I will be honest. I felt a little bad. I decided to go back and research the Duct Tape Marketing Blog,to find examples of where John talks about being authentic in the social media/blogging world.

He has many posts talking about authenticity, “humanness”, and the importance of strategy/clear objectives in blogging.

Here are the excerpts:

Engagement Without Volume Is A Lot of Work

John: What matters always, always is the completion of meaningful long term strategic objectives. So, the discussion of who’s blog readers are more engaged or if 500 hyper engaged readers is better than 50,000 kinda engaged readers somehow starts sounding a bit like the discussion of the best college football team every year. Until there’s a playoff, and everyone has the same goal, the discussion is silly.

The Ultimate Social Marketing Question

John: When planning your social marketing strategies, tools and tactics the ultimate question you must ask is this – “What do I want the relationship with my customer to look and feel like?”

7 Ways To Get More Blog Comments

John: Show some humanness – No matter what your blog topic is readers like to know that the author is a human being. It’s okay to let that show and to add personal thoughts. Only you can determine how far to go with this, but I know that your readers will connect the more they know your story.

John caters more toward the small business market when it comes to blogging and online marketing ideas but his ideas can still resonate at the corporate level. Believe me, they resonate.