Corporate blogs could fail, according to Mike Manuel, because the people who write them will skip the first two steps—recognizing the influence of participatory communication and listening to what people are saying. Instead, communicators jump directly to engagement (or, in other words, writing blogs). As a result, you end up with a blog purportedly written by the Geico mascot (which, thankfully, hasn’t been updated since July).

This point of view strikes me as an example of the “bad PR is bad” theorem. God knows there are enough PR-oriented blogs focusing on best practices and key opportunities to lead many companies to take a smarter approach. But there will always be those who simply want to capitalize on a new trend without really understanding it or using it to its best advantage.

Still, Manuel’s rant is instructive.