I haven’t blogged much lately, because everything that I want to say, Carter has covered, or has said better than me.

He points out the obvious errors of my ways though with these facts.

Question:     I would read vendor AR blogs if they had relevant, useful, timely information (pick one)

• 20% – Yes, regularly
• 31% – Yes, occasionally
• 26% – Yes, episodically related to major news or announcement coverage
• 5% – No, because I do not read blogs
• 8% – No, because I do not have time
• 9% – No, because most vendor blogs are a waste of time
• 1% – Undecided

I’ve been reluctant to blog on category 3 as I don’t want to be the site for here’s the latest IBM announcement, you can go to IBM.com to see that.

The key is relatively useful and timely.  The jury is out as to whether I’ve been useful, but timely is a very fine line for me.  Here’s why:

Timely for me is way before the news, that’s when I want to get to the analysts.  It shows the trust and the very personal relationship we have to hash out our future prodcts, pricing and plans.  That is diametrically opposed to how to blog, being transparent about what you are doing.

So what’s a mother to do?  I have found that I’ve been able to reach analysts via the blog, twitter, social media back channel for speaking to them.  Heck, I’ve had analysts say to me that they didn’t want to wind up in my blog for me trashing their competition for timeliness.  So it’s how you use it that counts. I’m use social media as an analyst relations tool and find it an advantage over my competition who don’t use it or use it out of etiquette.

I can’t argue the points above though.  Carter as usual is right on.  But then I break all the rules of good blogging anyway like staying on subject and consistency, so there you go.