As a public service I offer 26 "reasons" why where are so few blogs on the topic of software marketing, and by association, why you should not consider starting one.
(SET TONGUE_IN_CHEEK=ON)
A) Because corporate blogs operated by marketing shills are useless, un-authentic, self-serving and controversy-free. All of which translate into no readers.
B) Because blog consumers are technical, and feel that reading anything associated with both the words "software" and "marketing" will give them the clap, or worse, ruin their programmer street-cred.
C) Because the discipline of software marketing is poorly understood, poorly practiced, and even more poorly valued, which means there are few people to write about it.
D) Because software marketing is in its infancy, which means there's not much to write about.
E) Because product managers don't like to think of themselves as being in "marketing", since that would wreck their credibility with their programmers.
F) Because we decided in advance to keep our lore as a tightly-held secret, and pledged to seek out and kill anyone who violated this sacred trust.
G) Because it's just not all that interesting.
H) Because writing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft rants day after day gets boring.
I) Because software marketers are too damn busy trying to avoid getting fired.
J) Because it's the simplest marketing in the world - name your product after what the produt does, take out ads in the trade rags, launch a clean website, and voila, marketing. What's there to write about? Look at the Oracle ads for chrissakes.
K) Because the programmers write what they damn well please, not what customers want, which marginalizes the role of marketing.
L) Because all you need is demand generation to keep the lights on, which isn't "real" marketing.
M) Because no one really knows how people
use software, which means that product marketing based on consumer preference doesn't exist in the software business like it does in
every other industry.
N) Because product marketing people are shy.
O) Because marketing people don't bother to understand the product, which disqualifies them from speaking to customers - which eliminates their credibility.
P) Because buzz-words are transparently bad.
Q) Because the folks who run software companies are either software geeks who don't value marketing, or financial types who don't trust the metrics used by marketing to justify their budgets.
R) Because the software industry has not "industrialized" it's manufacturing processes, and therefore can't exploit market intelligence in a timely manner, which crushes the range of marketing activities possible.
S) Because software marketing bloggers think they have to write dissertations every time, and it's hard to keep that up over months with no comments to reward you.
T) Because sooner or later all marketing people realize they're just spouting nonsense, by gum, and they run off and become sheep wranglers.
U) Because why blog when you can write collateral? Woo hoo! More fact sheets!
V) Because they have to clear eveyrthing they write with legal, their managers, and their peers, lest they embarass themselves by making a bold statement that doesn't "hold water".
W) Because they refuse to expose their ground-breaking, proprietary ultra-smart creative brain spasms to their rapacious competitors who are
definitely going to read their blog and
steal their ideas!X) Because they are spending too much time on planes, in parties, and at conferences to bother.
Y) Because they are tired of getting flamed in their comments, and they don't dare moderate their comments because they'll be flamed as a "censor", and we
all know censors suck.
Z) Because after a while it stops being fun.
(SET TONGUE_IN_CHEEK=OFF)
Honestly, though, we need more product marketing blogs. Or maybe I just need to write more.
Francois over at Emergence Marketing wrote Friday about the dumbest trade show tchotcke (sic) ever. Sorry Francois, that's not the worst ever. 
