Since writing on analysts and bloggers I’ve had some more thoughts and a lot of feedback, some of which is incorporated below. This blog has stimulated quite a few reactions, and I encourage readers to look at Dean and Dan’s comments here.
Pretty much everyone agrees that vendor-oriented market exposure is the primary motive for the analyst blogging going on today, and that firms with a large end-user client base like Gartner are being rational — for a number of substantive reasons — for not jumping in. However, there are additional thoughts for analysts’ motives on blogging –
- 1) Declarative living. For example, it’s a coincidence that the blogger happens to be an analyst, he’s really blogging to whinge about how much he hates business travel.
- 2) Professional peer networking. For example, trading technical thinking with a small group of peers in IT, vendors, or academia who flourish in their technical niche. Those motives of the analyst-cum-blogger are personal, not driven by the firm’s agenda.
- 3] Defensive motives. Where firms ‘blogwash’ themselves to avoid being erroneously labelled as a ‘social media laggard’ by small-scale competitors who can only advance their own agendas by taking the incumbents down a notch. These would be faux-blogs, not serious contributions to discourse.
I’ve also been involved in a fascinating discussion about blogger relations, and been pointed to a few articles which tie into some of these themes. They are best read in the following, chronological, order.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=438
http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2006/11/01/blogger-relations-at-adobe-oracle-and-sap-and-a-bit-of-ibm-microsoft-sun/
http://www.johnsimonds.com/2006/11/more-on-blogger-relations/
Duncan, I enjoyed your original post about bloggers versus analysts, and the discussion that ensued in the comments. As an independent analyst who also has a consulting practice with end-customer organizations, my reasons for blogging are similar to Dean Bubley (who commented on your original post): it creates a wider audience for my opinions and therefore drives business; it provides a platform for getting opinions and research out earlier than a more formal white paper process; I enjoy writing as a part of the creative process; and it helps to strengthen my professional network with those with similar interests, wherever they might be.
Although I know that a lot of vendors read my blog, the audience that I’m targetting is really end-user organizations. I do a lot of “reporting” type blogging from conferences, as well as some number of product reviews. Although I do cover some of my “declarative living” topics on my blog, I leave most of those for other channels, since my blog is intended to be part of my business marketing exposure to the world, and needs to be managed appropriately.
[…] Merv Adrian, the former Forrester analyst who recently founded IT Market Strategy, has produced a useful summary of some of the discussion about analysts who blogs. It’s a useful summary of the discussion on blogs’ influence, because it shows both what’s on people’s mind and also the blind spots that are not coming up in the discussion, some of which we have touched on here and here. […]