The marketing value of blogs is underrated.

How many Web sites include blogs?

More importantly, since the topic is marketing, how many commercial Web sites include blogs?

As blog-marketing guru Robert Scoble writes:

Now, what is the Web these companies are gearing up for? Yes, you’d be right if you guessed a bloggy Web. A Web with real people talking about real stuff on it. Not a manufactured site that has no life. No soul.

This is very refreshing. It’s been my experience that companies are incredibly uncomfortable letting their real people talk about real stuff and actually engage in dialogue with real people who might be their customers or partners or prospects!

The first thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto states that “Markets are conversations”. Blogs are a phenomenal vehicle to facilitate such conversations.

Almost any Open Source project provides evidence of the compelling effect of such conversations oriented around a community. Today, many of these conversations make use of blogs and wikis to supplement mailing lists.

It’s really a shame that corporate marketing hasn’t glommed onto blogs to facilitate their conversations.