Welcoming Category Expertise to the Blogosphere

When it comes to the pragmatic marketing of its category expertise over the years, Ariba has come up short. I know firsthand from my experience over the years that the amount of knowledge inside the global services organization (i.e., the category sourcing and advisory group) is huge. But the question is how best can Ariba share it with a potentially huge global prospect base (and eventually monetize it)? Recently, Tim Minahan announced on Supply Excellence -- which I'm guessing will eventually become "Spend Excellence" -- that he would be inviting some of these voices into the mix. According to Tim, he "expects that their regular contributions will give SupplyExcellence a new dimension and provide a valuable resource for supply market information. I also hope that their experienced -- 'been-there-done-that' -- opinions will make this blog the SquawkBox for supply and spend management professionals."

I look forward to hearing these new voices in the Spend Management blogosphere. However, I'm holding out that some of these new bloggers will find that they enjoy this new forum so much, they start blogs of their own. This is something I've individually encouraged a number of category experts I've known over the years to do, but so far, few have taken me up on the advice. Still, I think there's a huge opportunity out there to have a daily conversation with an audience hungry for expert category analysis, not just the commodity news that the trade pubs have been sharing with us for years.

- Jason Busch