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.
