Interacting with Customers through Corporate Blogging
Posted by Administrator on September 19th, 2005
By John Cass, Backbone Media, Inc. | PR Communications
On Oct 24th 1861, the western and eastern sections of the transcontinental telegraph were joined at Salt Lake City, Utah. The new telegraph made the pony express obsolete and enabled fast communications between the east and west coasts of the United States. On March 10th 1876 Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call to his assistant in Boston, Massachusetts. The invention of the telephone transformed instantaneous communication around the world.
Business people and investors used the early telegraph to get fast information in order to make sell and purchase decisions about companies and stock. The telephone made it possible for people to talk with other people over great distances. In 1915 the first transcontinental telephone call was made between the east and west coasts.
The history of telecommunications is one of connection, with the introduction of the web, people could for the first time easily publish their thoughts and ideas in a public forum on a worldwide basis without great cost or inconvenience, the invention of the web has been as momentous to our generation as the telegraph or telephone were to the generations of their day. We all know the importance of the web and its effects upon society, its ability to connect people to other people. What we often don’t realize is the significance of the web to customers, not just in being able to buy products more easily, but having the ability to compare products and vendors easily using information from their fellow customers on the web.
The invention of the telephone has been very significant in connecting people together over long distances. Today, I believe it’s harder to understand the significance of the web in enabling customers to connect with one another. Customers now have as much if not more access to information through the web than companies in an industry. Customers can also communicate with their fellow customers about products and vendors by self-publishing on the web using websites, forums and now blogs.
This new power of customers to connect explains why corporate blogs have grown in popularity in recent years, corporations have recognized their customers are using blogs and other social networking websites to self publish their opinions about products and services. To connect with customers and get their feedback on their ideas and products, companies have launched forums and blogs.
This summer Backbone Media conducted the Backbone Media Corporate blogging survey, 97 corporate bloggers took the survey, and we interviewed bloggers at six companies for in-depth case studies. Backbone Media discovered that to be able to market to customers who read and use blogs, companies should develop a blog content strategy that focuses on their customer’s ideas and suggestions. By asking for feedback on products customers feel more involved in the product development process and are eager to give their feedback, either in the form of comments on corporate blogs or through writing posts on their own blogs.
The results for companies were better products and more links from customer blogs; resulting in higher search engine rankings. Larger numbers of customers become evangelists, and direct traffic to websites through blogs increased.
To build a successful corporate blog when a company is using a content strategy of product development we discovered companies have to select the right people to blog, usually the people who customers most want to talk with should write blogs, a blogger should have a lot of knowledge about a product so that they can answer any customer questions.
The focus of any blog posts should be on thought leadership and responding to customer enquires, companies must also monitor and respond to any blog posts out in the community. A little like the telephone when the telephone rings its important to pick up the telephone, companies are finding that when a post online is made its important to find comments about their company and respond if needed.
Summing up, if a company wants to take advantage of corporate blogging efforts they must learn to use the new reality of customers’ self publishing on the web, by interacting with customers through their own corporate blogs or commenting on customer blogs and forums.
About the author
John Cass is the Director of Internet Marketing Strategies for Backbone Media, Inc., a Search Engine Marketing and Web Design Agency based in Boston. Cass was lead author on “Corporate Blogging: Is It Worth The Hype?â€? a 70 page study and website on the value and benefits of corporate blogging. The study reveals how such companies as Microsoft, Macromedia and IBM are using blogging. A member of the American Marketing Association, Cass is the 2005/2006 President of the Boston Chapter of the AMA. Cass has been blogging at his PR Communications blog since 2003 and now runs Blogsurvey at Backbone Media.
{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, corporate+blogging}
September 20th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
John,
I agree with your summary and would say that it would appear almost imperative these days for any savvy organisation to keep a grip on its competitive advantage by implementing a pro-active blog strategy - scanning blog mentions of its products/brand, and interacting either on its own corporate blog or on various self-publicised consumer blogs to maintain dialogue and increase brand evangelism ……
You mention company bloggers should be those with product-rich knowledge, but it seems that a whole raft of skills are required - including blog content strategy development, blog product/brand mention monitoring, corporate positioning strategy via blog activity and blog response … almost a whole team of differing skills - do you see these roles being driven by as an adjunt to an in-house communications department with hands-on blogging from product ‘tecchies’ - or greater involvement from CEO or non-communications management …?
As an aside, I would add that it would seem that in this current climate of reputation management, it would be necessary to ensure a politically and commercially astute blog content manager was in place within a company to ensure responses on the right side of corporate governance …. in case a posse of company product enthusiasts got carried away with blogging to customers and forgot key communications boundaries and corporate messages ….
Bernie
September 20th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
John,
I agree with your summary and would say that it would appear almost imperative these days for any savvy organisation to keep a grip on its competitive advantage by implementing a pro-active blog strategy - scanning blog mentions of its products/brand, and interacting either on its own corporate blog or on various self-publicised consumer blogs to maintain dialogue and increase brand evangelism ……
You mention company bloggers should be those with product-rich knowledge, but it seems that a whole raft of skills are required - including blog content strategy development, blog product/brand mention monitoring, corporate positioning strategy via blog activity and blog response … almost a whole team of differing skills - do you see these roles being driven by as an adjunt to an in-house communications department with hands-on blogging from product ‘tecchies’ - or greater involvement from CEO or non-communications management …?
As an aside, I would add that it would seem that in this current climate of reputation management, it would be necessary to ensure a politically and commercially astute blog content manager was in place within a company to ensure responses on the right side of corporate governance …. in case a posse of company product enthusiasts got carried away with blogging to customers and forgot key communications boundaries and corporate messages ….
Bernie
September 20th, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Bernie,
Thanks for you comments and questions. I think in my experience that the companies that have seen some of the best results have been those companies that encouraged their development and customer service teams to blog. Macromedia and Intuit come to mind here. Customers want their questions answered and if you let the people who can best answer those questions blog, not only do you satisfy your customers quickly, but because of the public nature of blogs and the web you extend the value of any response on a blog to a wider forum. While once it would not have been cost effective for your CTO to answer every question on a blog, now because of the wider circle of readers, there is a big payback.
However, I think there are times when having the support of a word of mouth marketing team can help to support the ‘techies’, specifically, in blog monitoring and ideas for response. It’s a matter of time you see, Bob Lutz from GM on the FastLane blog has an agency helping to moderate comments and make suggestions on what to post in response. In a recent interview with two GM customers who commented on the blog, I discovered the customers were not satisfied with GM’s response.
Laurie Mayers, Senior Vice President and Deputy Managing Director at Hass MS&L’s Ann Arbor, Michigan, office, recently gave a presentation at the business blog summit in San Francisco. Laurie directs the agency’s work for the GM FastLane blog and she explained that GM does not have the time to respond to every comment.
Based on my interviews with the two customers I made some suggestions to companies on how to mitigate any negative reactions to comment response.
http://blogsurvey.backbonemedia.com/archives/2005/09/the_gm_blog_les.html
While a word of mouth marketing team will help in mitigating negative brand challenges, through triage, the technical staff’s time can be used most effectively.
I also agree that its important for a company to set some blogging policies and sit down with employees on how they will be implemented, this requires training and forethought. In fact I think most of the rules and policies are already in place, but up until now, most employees did not have access to a corporate web site that could broadcast to thousands if not millions of people via the web. It will be merely a case of employees being reminded of good etiquette for liability and competitive intelligence.
John
September 27th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
An important aspect for corporations to keep in mind when blogging is to keep their target audience as other bloggers, like you said. I think a lot of corporations tend to forget this once they get started, and don’t realize that what they are writing about sometimes is not what the people who are actually going to read it want to know about.
This can be pretty tricky, since blogging is so new and only a small amount of research has been devoted to it thus far. We might think we have the right subject matter targeted, only to find out later through research and surveys, etc. that it was wrong. That’s why its important that maintaining a good blog be coupled with maintaining a strong and consistent research of what your readers are writing about on their blogs, not just about your corporation, but others as well. You can gain a clearer understanding of what bloggers expect from your corporation by reading what they write about other corporations.
You wrote that, “A little like the telephone when the telephone rings its important to pick up the telephone, companies are finding that when a post online is made its important to find comments about their company and respond if needed.” Along these same lines, companies need to respond quickly to both comments made on their blogs as well as comments on other blogs. Sometimes a response is delayed, to the point that people become even more frustrated and annoyed. If companies are going to have a blog, they must take it just as seriously as their blogging consumers do. When someone leaves you a message on the telephone, it’s important that you respond in a timely fashion, just as in responding to a blog comment.
Great post!