Blyopia Redux: Bob's at it again!

By Tom Collins

I started this as a comment on Bob Bly's Blogging Redux post over at the Business Management Daily Marketing blog. But their comment tool refused to accept my comment, spitting up an error message that I had too many URLs (no hint how many they think are too many) and suggesting that I remove some and try again.

No, thank you.

Some readers may remember my series of "Blyopia" posts (Is Byopia Contagious?, Are You Susceptible?, and An Ounce of Prevention) from back when Bob published his Blog Schmog book.

So here's the comment I attempted to leave in response to Bob's latest uninformed assertion that blogging isn't producing ROI (which Bob myopically defines as $400K per year in revenue):

Hey Bob,

And here I thought your Blyopia was in remission.

You apparently missed the news that Bill Marriott's blog generated $4 million in bookings (video from MSNBC here).

And GM's Fast Lane blog generated $363,000 in its first year (Groundswell, pg. 113).

And Dell's micro-blog on Twitter generated more than $1 million in sales (see the roundup on Tim O'Reilly's blog).

Just because you choose to remain unaware does not mean that others are not getting serious ROI from blogging.

Nor does your fixation on short-term cash returns, without regard to long-term impact on the business (look into the concept of "bad profits" and the net promoter score), make that a healthy point of view for businesses, as we've discussed before.

You do what you do, Bob, and apparently do it well, but yours remains a myopic view of how businesses need to operate in a connected, Web 2.0 world.

Now, as with others who reqularly dump on blogging as a business tool, I have my doubts about Bob's sincerity here.

Should we be expecting his next book soon?

Or does he understand the value of blogging and links all too well? That would make his post yesterday, at best, a hypocritical effort at link-baiting and, at worst, consciously and harmfully misleading to those of his readers unfamiliar with the multi-facted business benefits of blogging.

What do you think?

Comments

[George Kittredge]

Hey Tom, here's another example to add to your list.

"Can't say no one makes money from Twitter now. The NBA does."

That quote came from Mark Cuban (Dallas Maverick's owner) after being fined $25,000 for his Twitter comment.

Check it out at: http://www.techchuck.com/2009/03/30/mark-cuban-throwing-away-even-more-money-on-twitter/

George K.