Susan Getgood has a great, two-part post on customer blogs (that is, enterprise-sponsored blogs that are written by customers of that organization). Here they are:
Customer Blogs: What type of company should do one? and
Customer Blogs: What you need to do to make it work.
Good stuff, read the whole thing, etc.
Some tidbits, to help stack the deck in favor of success. Susan says consider a customer blog if…
- Customers love the product
- Customers are already talking in some fashion
- Others can learn from the customers’ conversations (Susan calls this “exploting an information gap,” but isn’t it more about conversation and learning, rather than “exploitation?”)
- The hosting company is willing to give up control
The last one’s the biggie, isn’t it? It goes back to trusting the customer, I suppose…
tag: newvoices
(what’s this?)
Thanks for the mention and the kind words about my posts. And please think of “exploiting” in this definition: to use to best advantage 🙂 versus the more negative meanings of the word.
If you find an information gap, you should take advantage of it, by filling it with good, solid information. Filling the gap, you help the community and yourself.