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This morning, I stumbled upon Wal-Mart’s new blog, Check Out, which went live seven days ago. After a quick look around, I decided, for several good reasons, that I’m ready to drop everything and go to work as a Wal-Mart blogger.

The first thing that sold me on the idea was the message contained in the Dec. 5 Welcome to Checkout post announcing the blog’s “live” status. The fact that an icon of the blogosphere was quoted in that post didn’t hurt either. That post’s author(s), the Check Out Team, described the blog this way:

~~ This is a blog, simply, about a team of experts at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club who have really cool jobs working with gadgets, games, sustainability and more. Even better, these jobs are centered around helping people save money and live better.

~~ We’re excited.

~~ Finally, in terms of blogging, we like the advice Robert Scoble gave back in 2003 when he wrote his version of a “Corporate Weblog Manifesto.”

As a wordsmith and recovering public relations practitioner, I appreciate the simplicity and to-the-pointedness of their message. Even greater, however, is my appreciation of the second thing that sold me on the idea — a simple mathematical equation:

~~ Since going live SEVEN DAYS ago, the blog has published only EIGHT NEW POSTS. Furthermore, the blog lists and displays the photos of NINE WRITERS who make up the Check Out Team. Do the math! Every writer except one — who I assume is the boss and does nothing but assign and edit posts — is responsible for writing only ONE POST PER WEEK.

Since I began blogging in October 2006, I’ve published more than 1,100 posts — or an average of 2.6 posts per day! Granted, not all of them were feature-length posts, but many of them — at least one per day — came close.

With literally millions of ideas — in the form of people, products, etc. — waiting inside every Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club store, I think I could handle the “stress” of having to write ONE POST PER WEEK.

Where do I apply?

Step 1: Jump onto the meme.

Step 2: Skip the research and instead focus on some minor, unimportant aspect of the meme topic (in this case the name).

Step 3: Publish.

As Nathan correctly points out, bloggging in one context isn’t the same as blogging in another context. Modifiers do have an impact, and I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with a group of practioners coming together to discuss best practices in a comfortable environment.

So much heat, so little light. As you speculate as to how clueless “they” are, have you considered *who* they are (by name)? Do the fiery speculations sound right when you substitute real names for “they”?

How many of the critics have experience in large corporations? What would “just do it” look like in, say, a global corporation with the world’s most widely recognized brand? What would it look like *inside* the company (and no hand-waving).

Things really are different when you deal with (many) millions of customers, tens of thousands of employees and revenue in the billions. It seems to me that this is a group of bright people (the ones I’ve met, certainly) who are trying to do good things in a challenging environment. All this pile-on based on a press release and small web site simply confirms that the big companies face a different set of challenges.

Sure, this new council isn’t perfect, but it’s barely a day old. Time will tell what kind of mark it’ll make. Were going to give it a chance to succeed.

Most executives, I’m guessing, have that “It’s my idea so I’m gonna hide it and not help anybody until it has served my greedy needs.” Much like Axel above. But it’s helping the people who care about getting better get better, even if it means helping others too. There’s still about a billion and a half companies that aren’t getting better as fast. I’d say that’s a damn good competitive advantage having a resource like that. Looking at just the obvious competition is a disaster waiting to happen.

The name still seems weird, though. Here’s a group of people that need help figuring this out and then presenting the group like they’re the thought leaders… Very strange…

Parul
http://www.bhopu.com

Mit der Gründung eines Blog Council wollen Firmen wie SAP, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Coca Cola, General Motors und etliche andere Regeln und Standards für Corporate Weblogs festlegen. Näheres steht in der Pressemitteilung des Projekts. “Wir woll…

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

Sean
Microsoft.

Obviously they don’t think there is any share-holder-value-increasing business reason to do this, otherwise, they wouldn’t do it. Or maybe it’s a way to see what other people are doing — but if I had some new marketing 2.0 way to reach customers, I’d rather stay at work and reach them than give everyone else a leg up on my ideas.

The whole point of a corporate blog is to inject the human touch into a business, and I’ve seen it done with great success only when the authors are open about it.

Not only is this idea counter-intuitive, it’s also just plain sad. Any company who joins this joke is broadcasting their ignorance to the world.

pfft.. “The Blog Council”.. who the f*** do these guys think they are?