A new article up on CRMGuru: Blogs: Make Way for the Social Customer
Excerpt:
Bill Broadbent, a 20-year industry veteran, entrepreneur and successful CEO has a weekly electronic newsletter that boasts 400,000 opt-in members. And someday soon, he may stop publishing it.
Companies like Broadbent’s–not high-tech companies, mind you, but companies that sell things like T-shirts, kitchen gadgets and yogurt–are moving away from “traditional” media and marketing channels and using online weblogs or “blogs” in order to connect with their customers in unprecedented ways.
What’s going on here?
Welcome to the free-wheeling world of online communities, where the lines between companies and customers are blurred and feedback from the market can be instantaneous, unfiltered and–sometimes–sharp-edged.
What follows is an overview of how blogs, which, like other emerging social technologies such as enterprise social networking systems and wikis, are being used today to interact with customers in completely new ways.