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Character Blogs Send the Wrong Message

Character is what creates a devoted audience for a blog and causes it to float to the top, it’s what makes blogs “sticky”. People read personal-corporate blogs because they speak to the values of the corporation by letting the people inside a company talk in a human voice. The values of a company make a much more compelling story to consumers than the value of what they sell.

Clueless marketing departments and companies eager to exploit blogs without putting anything real about themselves on one have come up with the misguided concept of character blogs. A writer assumes a fictious persona while writing the posts, trying to gain the advantage earned of real character by creating a fake one. The worst example of this was a Captain Morgan blog that had the Cap’n talking about playing basketball – historical impossibility ignored. I was mercifully taken down, but not before they garnered most of their attention from people calling them phonies.

I’d take it even further and say they send the wrong message to consumers. They say to us “Hey, you’re hip to blogs right? Cool, well we’re going to jack the system by approximating what it really is about blogs that makes them feel authentic. Oh, don’t bother interacting – it’s not a real person anyway.” Feels about as warm and authentic as a faceless mannequin.

if you send a mascot to the market conversation, you look like a fool. A character can’t express the human voice of a real person. Now, if you want to publish a blog and not give the author’s name – an informational blog, that’s fine. But don’t pretend to be what you’re not, especially when it’s painfully obvious to everyone else.