The challenge that today’s companies face is one of mindshare. Mindshare is all about how many people are aware of your product. Think of it like market share, except instead of having a percentage of the market in terms of dollar value, you value mindshare on the percentage of people who know what the heck you do. The problem is that everyone is vying for mindshare, and customers only have a certain amount of mindspace. Create places that are meaningful to your customers; only then will your mindshare grow.

BLOGS AS MARKETING TOOLS: THE STONYFIELD FARM STORY

Even if you are a relatively small company, your blog can have a huge effect on your company’s profile, your customer relationships, and the way customers think about you and your products. In April 2004, the Stonyfield Farm yogurt company began blogging (www.stonyfield.com/weblog/). Stonyfield runs five blogs, each targeted at a different part of their market. Some are targeted at farmers and those who remember traditional farming nostalgically; others are targeted at parenting and healthy living, as having a healthy image appeals to busy parents. The focus on healthy living, the environment, and family values are important facets of the company’s personality, something it prides itself in having maintained, despite the company’s phenomenal growth.

Stonyfield Farm realized that customers make buying decisions at the refrigerated food section in the grocery store. Shoppers are conditioned to choose the lowest priced item for most commodity items such as yogurt. However, Stonyfield believes that by tying its values to its customers’ values, it can create a lasting impression that makes the extra cost per purchase seem completely worthwhile.

Using your blogs as a way to reflect your business’s values, culture, and priorities is one of the best ways to ensure that your blog isn’t simply another vehicle for spouting the same old marketing drivel to which customers are becoming desensitized. Blogs allow you to talk directly to your customers as important people, which is an opportunity you should never ignore. The reality is that the more companies vie for mindshare through regular transmission methods, the less effective all campaigns are. The simple reason is that customers are able to dedicate less and less of their mindspace to each company or product. The answer to the challenge is simple: create spaces where your customers can consistently engage in dialogue with you. Create places that are meaningful to your customers; only then will your mindshare grow.

BLOGGING IS A CHOICE

Clearly, if you are not blogging, you are losing customers you could be gaining, you are losing customers you currently have, you are losing influence you could be wielding, and you are losing out on relationships that could redefine your company. When your customers are talking, you have a responsibility to engage with them. The great thing about blogging is that it can have business benefits regardless of whether or not you actually have your own blog: you can still listen to your customers and engage with them even on blogs that are not your own. Obviously, having your own blog will allow greater benefits, such as customers being able to communicate directly with you, your being able to create positive experiences on your blog, and having the human voice of your blog become associated with your company. Every business has a choice to make: either ignore blogging or embrace it. Blogging isn’t going away any more than regular websites are going away. Soon enough, customers will simply take for granted that every company has a blog. Businesses will either participate and engage or ignore and distance themselves.

Increasingly, customers are looking for businesses that do more than simply provide the lowest prices they are seeking relationships. Companies that continue to cut prices, cut corners, and take customers for granted are engaging in a race to the bottom. On the other hand, businesses that value their customers, engage with them, and make them participants in the company’s future are engaging in a very different type of race a race to the top. In which race would you rather engage? What happens to companies who win the race to the bottom? Do they survive, thrive, or take a dive? What about companies who win the race to the top of their markets? Time will certainly tell. Either way, customers are taking notice.

Companies such as JetBlue and WestJet, both definitely engaging in a race for the top, are beating out competitors as large as United and Delta in the airline industry, primarily because these successful airlines pay attention to their customers though blogging. Customers are price sensitive only when you are price sensitive. It’s far more valuable to your business and your customers to focus on the unique value you create the examples of Starbucks, Apple Computers, and BMW don’t have to be unique. Price sensitivity is a creation of companies that follow what the market does; it’s far better to define the market than to serve it. In every industry, on every continent, companies dedicated to serving customers with an engaging customer-centric experience are facing one common challenge: managing growth. Blogging, listening to blogs, and participating in the conversation are merely extensions of having a customer-centric business. Whenever you value your customers, they will become your company’s greatest evangelists and will do your marketing for you. Blogs can do more than marketing, though; they can aid your product development and public relations, and even open entirely new markets and opportunities.

COMPANIES THAT BLOG

Once you have established that listening to the blogosphere is a natural and valuable way of finding value in the ongoing conversation, the next logical step is to come up with something to say. The best way to do this is to start your own blog. Most companies must first determine what type of blog to establish, who should write the blog, and other important issues. Unfortunately, the “safest” thing that many companies choose to do is to establish the blog as a YAMO Yet Another Marketing Outlet. A copy writer is hired to turn company news into glib posts, highlighting words such as innovative and talking only about the company’s strengths. The problem with treating your blog as another push venue is that it does nothing to respect customers. Your customers already see and hear your buzzwords in your commercials, press releases, interviews, and via all the regular channels. If they want to hear how innovative you are, they can go to your website. Instead, why not help them use your blog to read your opinions on issues in the industry, news (yours and others’ news), and insights.

Your blog needs to communicate more than just a standard marketing message. It needs to communicate something authentic, passionate, and authoritative the exact types of things that come through if you are talking face-to-face with a customer. If you are going to create only one blog, let the passion and authority of the author shine through in an authentic way. For many companies, a CEO or executive may provide the best perspective. Sun Microsystems has hundreds of staff blogs, but the most widely read is the blog by Sun’s president, Jonathan Schwartz (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan ). Nobody is more passionate and authoritative on the subject of Sun than Schwartz, and he happily tackles issues head-on in an impressive manner.

Be Real: The Scoble Story

On the flipside, sometimes the most important person to be blogging in your company may not be an executive. For Microsoft, one of Sun’s direct competitors, the most important blogger is arguably Robert Scoble (http://scoble.weblogs.com ). Scoble started blogging before he joined Microsoft his existing blog was actually a major force in landing him the job. In his role as a technical evangelist, Scoble has to be both authoritative and honest. One of Scoble’s rules is to tell the truth, even if it means admitting that a competitor’s product is better or if it means Microsoft is doing something wrong. This can be scary for an executive to do though Sun’s Schwartz does it quite successfully. For Scoble, this comes naturally, and the net effect is that he has become one of the most influential people in a company with more than 55,000 employees. The external effect is that Microsoft now has a trusted voice who will give the straight and passionate answer to even the hardest questions. The question of who in your company should blog isn’t an easy one to answer. However, if you are going to create only one blog, make sure your blogger has the following three characteristics: passion, authority, and authenticity. You can’t lose.

Let Your Employees Speak for You: The Monster Story Monster.com, a major job site, successfully illustrates the concept of empowering your employees to be your blogging voice. Its official blog (http://monster.typepad.com ), includes blog posts from dozens of staff members who contribute on a variety of topics, from their first days at work, to their pet peeves (even with coworkers and managers), to their dreams and aspirations. Some of this is unique to the Monster blog because the company helps people find jobs, letting its employees discuss issues similar to those experienced by other employees in other companies is a good way to relate to potential clients. The great thing that Monster does, though, is let their employees be real people on the blog.

There isn’t a lot of marketing speak or “Rah! Rah! Monster rocks!” going on. You can tell employees are happy working at the company because of the passion and energy in their blog posts. You can tell that employees love helping other people find great jobs because it comes across readily in the text. Monster isn’t using its employees to gain mindshare; it’s empowering them to have a voice. This is valuable for a company whose main goal is to help others find their dream jobs.

COMPANIES THAT DON’T BLOG

Having your own blog is not a prerequisite for benefiting from what’s happening in the blogosphere. Sure, having direct input, establishing yourself as a thought leader, and having an engaging location for customers to communicate on your website is all very, very good. But your business can get value from blogging while not having its own blog. Nevertheless, you must realize that a conversation is going on and it’s a conversation to which you want to listen. By acknowledging this basic fact, you can leverage and monitor what is already happening in the blogosphere whether or not you have your own blog. We’ll get into how to track the blogosphere more later in this article; for now, let’s take a look at a few brief examples of ways you can listen in on bloggers’ conversations: Technorati (www.technorati.com) and PubSub (www.pubsub.com). Technorati watches blogs like a hawk. It allows you to search blogs either for specific terms (such as your company name or products) or for specific web addresses (such as your company’s website) to see who is talking about you. Technorati also provides another vital piece of information: how many bloggers are linking to the person who is talking about you or linking to you.

Services similar to Technorati also let you track your competitor’s links this could be one of the most powerful competitive intelligence services you’ve ever used, as it gives you real feedback and real information into your competitors and the challenges they are facing. Not only will you be able to gain wisdom based on customer input, but you’ll be able to avoid your competitors’ mistakes. I would never suggest that you consider blogs with 1000 blogs linking to them more important than blogs with only 10 or 20 blogs linking to them; you should be aware of every individual blogger’s reach. Treat each and every blogger as a customer, and treat the blogger with the respect that every customer deserves. However, be aware that if a blogger with a large audience is pissed off, his or her audience could be angry as well.

Either way, this angry saboteur can eventually turn into a powerful evangelist, as every bad situation has the potential for even greater returns when addressed quickly, openly, and with respect. PubSub monitors the feeds that bloggers produce. (For more information on feeds, see Article 2.) As PubSub monitors the feeds produced by the entire blogosphere, you can request that it produce a custom feed just for you. That feed could include the names of your products, your company name, the name of your CEO, and even the names of your competitors, allowing you to keep tabs effectively on your entire sphere of influence. Of course, you may want to split these into separate feeds; PubSub allows you to have as many feeds as you like, and you can organize them however you want. PubSub specializes in letting you know who is saying something as soon as it has been said. Technorati, however, can tell you how important a particular issue is who is talking about it, who is responding, and how fast is the news spreading. Using both tools together provides a powerful arsenal for understanding and participating in the flow of conversations.

Once you subscribe to the feed PubSub has produced, your aggregator or feed reader will automatically notify you whenever PubSub sees something new that meets the criteria you established. Never before have you had the power to react to a negative situation, crisis, or customer revolt as quickly as in the world of feeds. In most cases, you can be made aware of issues less than 10 minutes after a blogger blogs about it. This completely transforms your ability to work with customers quickly and, thanks to the power of your company blog, respond to it within minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. This can help stop negative word of mouth from spreading; but, even better, it creates a positive association with your company. People don’t expect pristine experiences, but they do appreciate and respect honest, authentic, and open discussion about how a company is willing to improve products and experiences.