McDonald's New Blog--Slow Service for the Hungry

We sort of knew something was coming from McDonald's back in October when we saw Steve Wilson, senior director for global web communications speak at BlogOn in New York City as he described a ponderously slow, occasionally frustrating steady process of a blog strategy heading toward implementation. We were among the majority of attendees who liked Wilson and his candor and felt the pain of his mission.

We were pleased five days ago, when we came across this posting five days ago on a nicely named new McDonald's corporate blog called Open for Discussion. We decided not to blog about it, because there were a few flaws that we thought would soon clean themselves up.  For example the blog runs about a paragraph, then you have to click on "More" to read it in its entirety, kind of newsletterish for a blog and making us think of RSS partial feeds. Open for Discussion also has six categories that are, well supposed open for discussion.

But it's nearly a week now, and there's just this one post and the poor thing has only one comment and I'm growing earful the poor darling will soon die from loneliness.

The folks at McDonald's really should know that if you want the crowds to come in, you'd better serve them up faster and better than that.  You can't have a menu with six categories and then offer just one little morsel. I keep coming back for faster fare and it just isn't there.

So give me a break today. You've started nicely, but if you want this blog to succeed, you need post often.  You need to join other conversations.  You need to engage you customers and prospects in a conversations. You need to show a willingness to listen, really listen.

A weekly newsletter-type proclamation will do you no better than did the Lincoln Fry.

Comments

[Paul Morriss]

I just posted a comment, but as it has to be approved it may not make it on. I can understand why some people want comment approval, I just hope that my comment, which is genuine and not offensive I think, doesn't get dropped. It said this:

"What more can you do?" you ask. More information would be good I think. So this blog is a good start. It would be useful to know how local the cows are to the stores they supply. How far they have to travel before they are killed. How much the local farming economy benefits when a McDonald's store opens up somewhere. I'm in the UK, and when we had our foot-and-mouth epidemic a few years ago we found out just how far animals travel around the country, and in what conditions.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

As a corporate blog evangelist, I know the challenges and rewards.

I applaud McD's for their efforts.

Let me see if I can interact with them.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

I left an on topic and encouraging comment on their site. Also, I second your recomendations and observations, with a few additions on my own blog site.

Shel, I think it's great that you're supportive of them, just as you were for us.

[/pd]

I don't comment approval systems. They suck and should never be used. In todays world there are various methods to negate comments spam!!

[Jeremiah Owyang]

PD

Besides comment approval systems, what other methods are you reffering to negate comment spam?

As far as I can tell, some human approval is needed. Some comment spam is so borderline that it makes sense to have a human check point.

Also, a 'comment spam' system would not be able to determine if a comment was just plain off topic.

In my opinion, if a corporate blog can approve comments within 24 hours, that's sufficient

[Dave Carter]

I work for the company iUpload, we put the blogs in place for McDonalds. (am I plugging my company.. or simply being transparent?)

Personally I think having the blog in place is a big step. Why wait till someone can commit to blogging at some predefined interval before you share even one piece of information?

I think a lot of corporations do not want to commit to blogging specifically because of this kind of criticism. If there is one person in a corporation that can share some relevant information with me.. I want that person sharing it, rather than wait until they can commit to blogging regularly.

That being said, I DO agree that blogging frequently is a good thing. People need to adopt a culture of sharing information in a blog that they probably already do via email, presentations and other vehicles. We need to help bloggers find their voice, and their comfort zone. A good start might be to leave a question in the comment section of the post? How you define a blog as being successful is up to the blogger. Is it traffic? Is there value in drawing in thousands, or simply having this info available next time someone went looking for it using Google?

As far as "comment approval". I think each blogger can decide if they want their post to be a forum for discussion.. or if they simply want to share positive thoughtful reviews.

We (iUpload) just finished a site for the Canadian Election for CTV (a national TV network for you non-Canadians out there). CTV allowed comments, but were 100% moderated. It was a huge effort for the client to weed through comments that ranged from racist remarks to product plugs. As a news site, the client felt no value in publishing rants or poor quality posts. Bloggers can jump on this as counter to the "blogoshphere", but the alternative is to shut down comments lke the Washington Post. CTV decided to throw resources at reading posts to add depth to the site.

Lets embrace every person that decides to blog. Styles will vary.. some will have advertising.. some will allow comments. Some will say things we disagree with. If you still want to change things.. go recruit part of that 99% of the planet that isn't blogging.

Darn.. I really should have blogged this and tracked back.. OK.. I'm pasting in my blog too.

[shel israel]

Dave,
I think you are being righteously transparent, and you raise a good point. But tell me, why would McDonald's go this far, then go public and then not post? It just doesn't make sense to me.

[David Kline]

I think it's pretty clear that they don't yet have a real blogging strategy in place -- one that has a vision and objectives for leveraging the customer contact the blog generates to improve sales, marketing and even product development.

My guess is a blog evangelist there got the go-ahead to start it up but only as a public affairs channel.

Hopefully, it will evolve into something more.

[David Tebbutt]

Am I missing something here?

"I keep coming back for faster fare and it just isn't there."

Why not just have an RSS feed and wait for McD to tell you when it has something to say?

Or doesn't it even offer RSS?

[John Cass]

Maybe Dave Carter can give us some more insight into their content strategy. Maybe they went live and something happened. You never know. Shel, if after a month they don't have a post I'd say your right, but a week give them a chance to get going. I think sometimes we forget that blogging is very new to most people. If McDonald had done this three years ago, why they would have been one of the first bloggers. Lets give them a chance to get going before we criticise too heavily.

[/pd]

Jeremiah : theres the simple verifiction code system that can be used. Typepad has it, wordpress has it and also blogger has it. Its become a std practice o negate spam.

Deterimental /off topic comments then need to be filter and cleant up on a blog. thats just plain old simple hard work of a human being. If you dont invest in human interfaces, then the conversation does not happen. its a two way street. all I am asking for is open comments up and let me post. Trust me, like I trust you !!

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Update Sat Jan 28th. The second post has gone up on Mcdonald's site, including my comment on the first post (took about 24 hours)

I'll bet they were not kind of unsure about what to do.

I don't know about you, but does the text seem so deliberate, scripted, and brochure-ish?

I was hoping to see something a little bit more raw and organic, ya know, kinda 'naked'

[Dave Carter]

I'll leave McD's to comment on their content strategy. That beg's the question, should they have a strategy? I'm not saying they shouldn't but I've seen a lot of blogging initiatives get buried while they try to find a strategy. There are some really good "right now" reasons to blog . A good one is transparency, and the ability focus on a really vertical topic that might not otherwise make it to the companies main WWW site.

I think blogs can be somewhat organic. I notice the CSR site has another post.. maybe they had that planned.. or maybe they said "look, people are reading this!".

I also notice they changed the template to show full content instead of one paragraph abstracts.

All in all, we see that blogs are two things. A voice for the author, and an opportunity for the public to participate in and direct the conversation.

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this dialog.. Cheers

[Sohbet]

thank you

[nefret sozleri]

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[Muhabbet]

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[prefabrik ofis]

thanks.