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Conversations at Forrester…welcome CEO Blogger George Colony

Categories: Forrester, Social MediaPosted on February 8th, 2008

I often get criticized for talking about my employer, but I’m going to risk doing it because this is an example of a company who’s joining the conversation, and coming from an industry that isn’t always known for opening the doors of information, it’s important to share that we live the same principles we’re preaching.

Today I had lunch with Shel Israel, he’s a blog evangelist, and co-wrote the book Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble, he gets the space. I told him that Forrester has quite a few blogs (most are frequently updated) and he was surprised to hear it. I asked him if I should blog it, and he looked at me with a surprised face and said “yes” as if ‘duh’. You can see the list of the many company branded blogs here. We’re not the only ones, Gartner has several blogs (great design), and Jupiter has over a dozen, and there’s a group of folks who actually watch the analyst industry, and have made this blog ranking of the industry. (I’m not on the list yet). There’s quite a few other employees who also happen to blog, such as Peter Kim, Ross Popoff-Walker and myself. Leave a comment if I’ve left out any other Forresterites, I’m sure I did.

CEO George Colony welcomes you to his blog

What’s really interesting is the challenge of CEO blogs, in fact I warn most clients NOT to let their CEOs blog, why? I’ve listed out 9 reasons why writing CEO blogs are a challenge. Recently, our Founder and CEO George Colony started a blog. I’ve held linking to him as I wanted to make sure that he was engaging, being interesting, and well, being relevant. He passed my test. You can read his thoughts on social sigma, he takes a stand on Microsoft+Yahoo, and being a Boston native wrote a thoughtful poem on the recent loss, last Sunday.

Time has already shown that having a lot of blogs doesn’t matter, nor having a CEO blog doesn’t matter. What really changes the game is when employees have real and open dialogs with the folks in their marketplace, their customers, prospects, vendors, and competitors.

I shouldn’t be the measure of our effort, so I encourage you to judge for yourself and let us know how we’re doing, we’re listening.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Forrester, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments
  • So there are people who watch the analyst industry? Are these analyst analysts?

    Whether or not someone blogs about his or her employer depends upon the attitude of the employer to the practice. Some are more encouraging than others.
  • Ontario

    Yup there are Analyst Analysts, glad to have them. Interesting thoughts on that here:

    http://openreasoning.blogspot.com/2008/02/analy...

    and here's some other resources

    http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/19/l...
  • Here's a question I've been pondering:

    Where is a CEO's blog most important? Internal or external?

    Some things to keep in mind are: size of the company, how much does the CEO know about the industry/company, and their time.

    I can see CEO internal blogs as a form of motivation ... "yes we are beating competition and heres why.."

    External (public) CEO bloggers is interesting though. Although valuable, I believe its more valuable if the CEO talks about everything else except for their company...

    what are your thoughts?
  • Jeremiah,

    I do listen and I think Forrester analysts have done a remarkable job of bringing Forrester into the blogosphere. I thought it was brilliant that George Colony shifted from his html op-ed columns/newsletters to a blog, and had the courage to fess up that if blogging doesn't "work" for him, he'll move again to some other channel.

    I just have to interject on the "top 100" analyst blog ranks: you're not willing to repeat it, but you joined Forrester after the measurement window closed for the quarter. That's the only reason you aren't already top, or top 5, etc. Farewell the bell curve...

    By my count, Forrester analysts are writing no less than 18 freely available blogs. Forrester and Jupiter have the highest number of analyst-written blogs, and the widest range of topics, of analysts in the English-speaking world. Maybe the world.

    About 7 of the Forrester blogs are "personal" The rest are company branded.

    That doesn't count the "logon required" Forrester blogs.

    Best,
    Barbara
  • Chris

    The job of a CEO is to lead, and that requires communication. I encourage all of my clients to have CEO INTERNAL blogs that want to improve communications.

    Analysis needs to be done for external blogs for CEOs, not every CEO is capable, willing, or ready. It depends on the situation.
  • Barbara

    Thanks for this analysis, you know more about the Forrester blogosphere than I do, great job.

    Yup, I'm aware I've wasn't on the index due to my start date, looking forward to the next iteration.
  • Julie Katz
    Hi Jeremiah,

    You asked for other Forr folks who blog. Besides Pete (beingpeterkim.com), there's also Kerry Bodine (who blogs about food, not customer experience, at wickedflavory.com), Bruce Temkin (experiencematters.wordpress.com), and Brian Haven (birdahonk.com). And those are only the ones I know about.

    Julie
  • Frankly, I find it odd that all industry analyst companies didn't immediately embrace the blog phenomenon.

    It's a opportunity for analysts to demonstrate their creative thought leadership, rather than the typical dry content that tends to make its way into analyst reports.

    That said, the lack of participation has leveled the playing field for independent analysts to gain exposure in the marketplace. As a result, the fragmentation is redefining the global analyst community.

    It used to be that the big company analysts got all the attention, primarily based upon their employer's legacy reputation. That's clearly not the case anymore. Mr. Colony will be competing for mind-share with an eclectic talent pool that spans the globe.
  • Jeremiah:

    Thanks for the plug -- I'm very glad to join the conversation.

    In answer to David Deans' comment. Analyst companies were never about walls or legacy reputations -- they are about the powerful cocktail of capital, ideas, access, and proprietary data. Most importantly, they are small networks of smart people who compel eachother to create the best possible research for clients. Social now means that clients and others can be part of that process -- inevitably resulting in higher, more refined value.
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