What do I mean by let’s go listing? Well, I was reading a post by Eric Kintz (MarketingProfs’ Daily Fix) on the next stage of evolution for marketing blog communities. Eric opines:

The marketing blogging social network is growing exponentially… However, bloggers have a distorted view of their importance. We forget that being big in the blogosphere still doesn’t mean anything to 99% of the country. The risk for vibrant blogging communities is to be “trapped” in the blogosphere, which can quickly limit their epidemic effectiveness.

Eric questions how could we, marketing bloggers, reach the remaining marketers outside the blogosphere. He brings up a good point here. As a marketing evangelist I’ve had opportunities to talk to mid-level marketing managers from many Fortune 500 companies. To be honest, only a minor percentage of them read blogs and I haven’t met one of them, who actually blogs. So, the point that Eric makes is well taken, but the answer to his question is challenging:

So what do you think? What will it take to spread the “epidemic” to the other 99% marketers?

I believe the answer to this question is two-phased. Primarily, I believe that the blogosphere offers a great way to share & transfer ideas among all marketers, and we are still at the early stages of its evolution . Spreading the “epidemic” to corporate marketers is, in my opinion, the next step before we can cross over to the remaining marketers. Here’s how I think that can be done (3-steps):

1. Formation of “Corporate blog communities”:

Marketing blog communities need to be formed around corporate environments. In the recent past, I’ve seen many high-profile blogging initiatives launched by major corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems etc… What this does is it creates thousands of corporate bloggers. The first step is the aggregation of marketing blogs within each of these corporate blog communities to form islands of viral communities. At this stage a great sharing of marketing concepts among corporate peers would take place.

2. The rise of Marketing “Scobles”:

Even though Microsoft has thousands of bloggers, there was only one Scoble. So for a myriad reasons, a few corporate bloggers will emerge from the chaos to represent the “voice of the company”. Likewise, the corporate marketing blogs from each corporation will see the rise of a “Marketing Scoble” from among their ranks — one whom everyone trusts as the ‘Marketing Source’ within the company.

3. Inter-networking between the “Marketing Scobles” and the “Mavens”:

This last step is the most important and fascinating to me. The Marketing Scobles of the world, need to share ideas with the rest of the Marketing bloggers of the world. This would entail a seamless transition of marketing concepts/ideas from corporate marketers to the 1% of current marketers blogging, thereby leading to Marketing Nirvana.

The second phase of spreading the marketing “epidemic” would involve the creation of live events that will bring together marketing influencers (bloggers et al) from all over the globe. Kind of like a Web 2.0 Conference for Marketers.

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To give you a feel for the current “corporate marketing blog” landscape, I thought of listing out five marketing bloggers who masterfully balance their craft, company and blogging ethos. Here are my picks:

1. Steve Rubel – Edelman PR
2. Jeff Solof – Sun Microsystems
3. Tara Hunt – Citizen Agency
4. Heather Leigh – Microsoft

…of course, the list would be incomplete without Eric Kintz from HP, whose blog post led to this train of thought.

p.s. The critera I used in selecting the above blogs were that the blogs were:
a.) authored by a prominent marketing employer of a high-tech corporation/agency,
b.) focused on marketing/pr concepts, and
c.) balanced corporate and marketing standards effectively.

Do you have any corporate marketing-specific blogs you wish to highlight?