WHAT BLOGS CAN DO

An open and honest public blog, written by an authoritative voice from within your company, allows your business to create a different type of experience between you and your customers: it allows you to create legitimate conversations that simply weren’t possible before online blogging. Blogging means your company will no longer need to depend on expensive focus groups, feedback forms, e-mail, and other time-consuming and tedious methods used for

gaining feedback. If you want to know why your latest product isn’t selling, you can ask your customers on your blog; they’ll tell you the truth. If an executive was recently fired for a corporate scandal, you can tackle the issue on your blog in an open manner. Such honesty makes an impression with your customers, which will be more real than almost any media article on the subject. Even more important is that any person who reads your blog is doing so by choice he or she came to your blog to see what you have to say. Blogs are just about the only marketing tool for which this holds true. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is looking at blogs as just another way to get out the same old marketing message. Nobody wants to read that kind of thing on a blog. Blogging is really about three things:

• Information Telling your customers what you’re doing and finding out what they are thinking.

• Relationships Building a solid base of positive experiences with your customers that changes them from plain-old consumers to evangelists for your company and products.

• Knowledge management Having the vast stores of knowledge within your company available to the right people at the right time.

Without blogs, company messages can get so filtered by public relations or the media that CEOs and other senior management have decided to talk directly with customers whether it be in the company’s stores, on the company’s airplanes, or at special events set up specifically for communicating with customers. The value of direct customer feedback is obvious, and blogs provide that on a global scale. Blogs are effectively a form of free advertising that your customers are begging for. Blogs are easy to track, provide a means to generate and measure buzz, and allow you to create positive experiences, and ultimately customer evangelists, simply by being real. You can also use blogging for exciting internal purposes to help employees generate and try out new ideas, involve and empower employees, and improve your ability to communicate internally. Whether you’re a global Fortune 100 company or a mom-n-pop plumbing supply retailer, internal blogs can help you stay organized and external blogs can change the way people relate to your business.

BLOGS WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

One of the biggest challenges facing your company is that, like it or not, your competitors are or will be using blogs. Not only that, but by scouring the blogosphere they can get all kinds of competitive intelligence on what you’re doing, what your customers think about you and your products, and where your company and the industry are going. Of course, all the same tools could be yours as well. The question for you, then, isn’t should you get into blogs, but how will you get into blogs and how will you leverage them to maximize their return to your business? Blog Marketing helps you decide how to develop a blogging strategy, how to launch your blog, and how to participate not only in your own blog but in the overall culture of blogging. WHAT’S IN A BLOG? With so many new blogging terms in use, I could write a dictionary (in fact, I included one in the back of this article). However, if you learn the following terms, you’ll look blog-savvy at your next dinner party (or corporate meeting):

• Blog A website comprising blog posts, or content written by the blogger, which are typically organized into categories and sorted in reverse chronological order. Most blogs allow readers to comment on individual blog posts.

• Blog posts Individual items posted to the blog (using blogware) by the blogger.

• Blogger The individual who maintains the blog and/or writes blog posts using the blogware.

• Blogosphere The community of blogs, bloggers, and blog posts.

• Blogware Software used to create blog posts and manage blogs.

• The conversation What happens when bloggers, especially millions of them, blog.

• Permalinks Permanent links attached to a particular blog post that remain unchanged.

• Trackbacks URLs that other bloggers use to cite posts or parts of posts; for example, when you, Blogger A, write about something Blogger B posted on in her blog, it’s best to let Blogger B know she has been mentioned in your blog. Trackbacks send Blogger B an e-mail with a notation that her blog has been cited.

WHO’S BLOGGING TODAY

Companies are blogging at a phenomenal rate. From large companies, such as Microsoft and Boeing, to small companies, such as Thomas Mahon’s tailoring business and Elisa Camahort’s marketing and public relations firm, businesses of all stripes are using the revolutionary power of blogs to create positive experiences, increase influence, and provide continual dialogues. Some of these businesses will be your competitors, others will be your partners, and some blogs might even be written by your employees. From GM’s increasingly popular and respected series of blogs to the Disney Channel’s use of blogs as an internal communications tool, more and more companies are turning to the diverse power of blogs to meet their current and future challenges head on. Blogs allow their customers and partners to see what companies are doing on a daily basis, which can be a powerful motivator for customers to continue doing business with blogging businesses. GM’s popular FastLane Blog spreads news, provides information for enthusiasts, and creates a community space where thousands of aficionados can discuss what is important to them. GM has also created a special Smallblock Engine Blog to engage customers with even more specific interests.

Creating a place where customers can talk about what’s important to them is only one of a large number of ways your business can use blogs to increase communication, redefine your brand, and change the way you do business. Microsoft, arguably one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, knows the power of blogs. Thousands of Microsoft product managers, developers, testers, and executives use blogs to talk directly with customers in a clear and authoritative way; to listen to customer complaints, suggestions, and ideas; and to track what customers and partners are saying.

In fact, Microsoft uses blog research so thoroughly that each product development team is directed to look for blog feedback before making significant changes to applications. Blogs don’t run Microsoft, but they do provide an unprecedented level of feedback for a company that needs to get real consumer information about products before it’s too late to do anything about it. Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner Marc Cuban started blogging because he was tired of “giving in-depth responses to a media question only to have the result be what the reporter or columnist intended to write and I was just fodder to help them make their point.” He saw blogs as an ideal way to “present my position on a topic in its entirety and not have to worry about how they condense a two-hour conversation into 500 words.”3 Cuban built a blog that allowed him to express his thoughts regarding issues and interests.

His blogging passion served to energize his team’s fan base even further. If having an open conversation with customers outside your company can transform your business, allowing employees space to share their interests and work ideas and build relationships can be even more powerful. In mid-2005, IBM turned to internal blogs to serve its employees. IBM’s official blogging policy states that the primary goals of this blog network are for employees to learn and to contribute.

The Disney Channel has also made innovative use of internal Blogs. While the company once used massive paper logs to keep track of engineering changes and issues, several years ago Disney began implementing blogs for these tasks. Now the blogs present an integrated, employee-driven solution to the impracticability of paper. Many employers who allow blogging internally find that employees who blog change their workdays and attitudes. They enjoy their work more, they connect more with people outside their teams, and they share and receive information on a whole new scale. These companies are seeing their products, processes, and quality of service increase as a result of employees being more communicative, more involved, and more outwardly focused. Throughout this article, we’ll look at companies that use blogs to make a real difference in business.

A fair number of these companies are in the technology sector, purely because this industry is where blogging got its start. However, the growth of blogs among every business is astounding from churches to rail yards, from yogurt and ice cream companies to retail stores, and from jewelers to a major cable company; all are using blogs in innovative ways to transform their businesses.