How Blogging Goes Wrong

A couple nights ago I was having dinner with a dealer friend and we were discussing the topic of blogging.  I got a good laugh when he told me that his franchise manufacturer had just established a blog department. “A blog department,” I exclaimed, “isn’t that oxymoronic?”  The whole idea of blogging is that information is openly shared from the fringes rather than the middle.  In other words, while I think it’s an excellent idea for an auto manufacturer to blog, the whole idea is that the blog identity be genuinely from the individuals who possess knowledge and responsibility of the content. 

Simply stated, companies don’t blog, people do.

Okay, having been critical of an OEM, perhaps we should turn our attention to “Internet departments” within dealerships.  If you really stop and think about it isn’t that oxymoronic?  Doesn’t every department of a dealership operation work, to some extent, in the Internet arena?  To have an “Internet department” denies the reality that the entire automobile business is the Internet.