What on earth was Debbie thinking?

What's Debbie thinking?????

What the ?????

Has the self-proclaimed blogging guru gone mad?

According to Debbie’s bio on her website:

“Debbie Weil – known as the Mona Lisa of Blogging – is a corporate and CEO blogging consultant and author of The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right (Penguin Portfolio 2006) available on Amazon and at major booksellers.

“She also writes BlogWriteForCEOs.com, a Technorati Top 10,000 blog considered one of the most influential about business blogging.

“Her clients range from Global 100 and Fortune 500 companies to professional associations and small businesses. She helped GlaxoSmithKline launch the official corporate blog for alli (pronounced ally), the first over-the-counter, FDA-approved weight loss product – and continues to work with them on the blog at AlliConnect.com.”

And it is this last connection that has seen her lose her mind. Allegedly.

David Murray reports on how he and an unknown other group of journalists/bloggers was contacted by Debbie and asked to fake-blog for her alliconnect client. Witness:

“Hi everyone,

This is a shameless request. I’m working with GlaxoSmithKline on the official corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weight loss product. You may have seen the TV ads.

While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments.

You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the blog at http://www.alliconnect.com.

If you’re inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need to say that you know me, of course.

It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog like this. It’s not easy.

- D

–
Debbie Weil
t: 202.364.5705 m: 202.255.1467
site: http://www.debbieweil.com
blog: http://www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com
book: http://www.TheCorporateBloggingBook.com”

What the??!!

Jenkins has already weighed into the discussion, and I can’t wait to read what Paull Young and Trevor Cook (authors of the Anti-AstroTurfing Campaign) as well as Constantin Basturea, Steve Rubel, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have to say on this…

As for me, I am stunned that a leading proponent of blogging within corporations is behaving so unethically. The fact that the WalMart blogs were fake had to be ‘discovered’; Debbie is coming right out in the open.

Now, as much as I am ‘anti’ any fake blogging (it totally undermines the whole ethos of Social Media), I am not unaware that satellites might have to be sent up to photograph the other side of me. Even though I have no experience of liposuction myself, were Ms Weil and her client able to arrange for me to partake in what academic researchers have found is Adelaide’s ‘secret’ growth industry (it’s cheaper to have professional body reconstruction here in Adelaide than anywhere else in the whole Asian region, a case of “Mutton recreating into Lamb”), I am sure Mrs BetterComms will be the happier for it if I were able to shake those few extra kilogrammes that plague my otherwise svelte and sylph-like self.

But until such time as I have had said liposuction, I am certainly not going to comment on someone’s client’s blog about it.

UPDATE: I wonder if Debbie or her client know about THIS blog…

Technorati : allan jenkins, constantin basturea, david murray, debbie weil, neville hobson, paull young, shel holtz, steve rubel, trevor cook