Category: blogs

Posted on

Great Business Blogging Article From CIO Insight

Ed Cone has just published an in-depth article on enterprise blogging, entitled “Rise of the Blog” in CIO Insight.

A very well written piece. A particularly spot-on assessment was:

“By enabling comments on its blogs, Sun can get a look at what mix of customers, partners, developers and employees is frequenting its sites, and respond to them. Customers who used to interact only with their salesperson can now communicate with members of the product team.”

DING! This really is the meat of this conversation. Sun’s folks seem to agree.

Jonathan Schwartz – “There’s an immediacy of interaction you can get with your audience through blogging that’s hard to get any other way, except by face-to-face communication. There’s no other way any individual, never mind someone who’s running a company as large as Sun, could speak face-to-face with that large an audience on a regular basis.”

Tim Bray – “This is a fantastically effective listening device. Customers are coming to us directly as bloggers. People see us do something wrong or stupid, or missing a chance, and they tell us. We get dozens of comments a week that can help us, and they go to the right people—how else is a smart guy in Cleveland going to find the relevant person at a computer company with 30,000 employees?”

This is the vanguard of this thinking, and really is presaging a move towards real customer interaction, as opposed to the things that have been called “CRM” but are really tools for managing sales teams and the Street.

Another bit in there that really stood out was the reference that Jared Spataro of Open Text made regarding the internal use of blogs as a communications medium during the integration phase of M&A activities. (Would have liked to have seen more depth on this; it sounds like a great application.)

Of course, David Weinberger gets the digging quote, saying that “public-facing blogs with voices that sound recognizably human will kill the ‘pompous and inhuman’ tone used in much corporate-speak.”

Indeed.

Posted on

BusinessWeek Business Blogging Cover Story Nails It

The cover story of the current issue of BusinessWeek sums it up well: “Blogs Will Change Your Business.”

Reading through the article, the one quote that resonated (and continues to do so) was this one: “Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.” It definitely feels like we’re at the inflection point; about to hit Geoffrey Moore’s chasm with respect to business blogging.

A couple of interesting tidbits:

Tidbit 1 – BW has launched blogspotting.net, their own actual, honest-to-goodness blog to cover the emerging area of blogs and business. To Heather, Steve, and the rest of the BW team…nice job!

Tidbit 2 – They also did a nice job pulling together a quick list of things to consider when launching a business blogging initiative. (Unfortunately, BW buried the link in a place requiring serious excavation in order to find it.) The highlights:

  • Train Your Bloggers
  • Be Careful with Fake Blogs
  • Track Blogs
  • PR Truly Means Public Relations
  • Be Transparent
  • Rethink Your Corporate Secrets

Boilers are stoked. Pressure is right. It’s time for this train to leave the station.

Although the quote noted above is spot on, the customer angle, and the “how are people really addressing business blogging” aspects were glossed over a bit in the article. (However, considering the article’s breadth, that’s understandable.) That being said, still would have like to have seen more case studies, and more examples of the different ways organizations are using blogs to connect with customers.

Posted on

Sunny, With An 80% Chance Of Kicking Some Serious Ass

Based on a recommendation, was checking out the WeatherBug site. Was scrolling around, and found an interesting, but mostly innocuous post:

“Why do you use your WeatherBug?

Hey WeatherBug users, we want to know! Why do you use your WeatherBug? Is it deciding what to wear in the morning, scheduling your weekend plans, checking on vacation locations… Open up to us and tell us why! While you are at it, let us know what else you would like to see in WeatherBug and ask us anything. Seriously, anything.

Click on the comment link below and scroll to the bottom of the page to let us know!”

Now, check out the footer on that post:

(234) Comments

Holy cow. Customer stories. And more customer stories. How about this, from “Pete”:

“I’m on disabilty so I’m kind of the Weather Guy for My Wife. I go to the Weather Bug all the time and then I go to my wife with the updates. I have had the weather bug for a long time now and I just enjoy everything about it. I like to call my friends all over the States and I look their weather up before I call them.”

Or this one, from “Jim”:

“I am a Wildland Firefighter. I use WeatherBug to keep me posted on the current and predicted weather. This allows me to prepare myself and the crew for extreme fire behavior due to high temps and low humidity, thunderstorms, etc.”

Or another use case, from “Jeff”:

“I am a Paramedic and working in the weather is what I do. I rely on Weatherbug for the accurate forcast and realtime weather stations so I know what to expect where I am working. I also access WeatherBug from my Nextel phone.”

And “J.D.”:

“The reason I use my WeatherBug is because I not only like to get my local weather, but I also use the feature for other towns across the United States, because I am a huge NASCAR, and IRL racing fan.”

These are not members of some homogeneous “market segment.” These are real people, conversing and telling their real stories, voluntarily. Good on ya, WeatherBug folks, for reaching out to them.

Connecting like this can’t help but serve them…and you…very well.

Posted on

Sun’s Blogs For Customers

Sun’s business blogging efforts get a nice spotlight piece in the Technology Review that just landed in the mailbox, which was penned by Wade Roush. Blogging and customers…whyzit matter? Here’s why:

“Sun’s Simon Phipps, whose job title is chief technology evangelist, says that researchers and developers can swap more ideas, build better software, and meet customers’ needs faster if they are active in online communities, where blogs play the dual role of soap- and suggestion-box. ‘In a world where you must speak with an authentic voice,’ says Phipps, ‘the obvious way is to let the people you most trust—your employees—speak directly to the -people you most want to appeal to—your customers.'”

and

“…not only do Sun’s blogs show customers that the company is paying attention to their concerns, but they have also become a major channel for communicating with programmers outside the company who write crucial third-party applications that run on Sun’s hardware and operating systems.”

and one more for good measure

“Consumercustomer-oriented (ed. – sorry…had to do that) companies that abjure the blogosphere are missing out on opportunities to generate buzz, monitor customer concerns, and—perhaps most importantly—show their human side.”

Posted on

Bloglines Adds New Functionality

Just noticing in my Bloglines feeds that each post now has a link to the trackbacks and comments associated with it. Cool…another good way to identify the “hotspots” of conversation that are taking place. These links jump outside of Bloglines to the places where the conversation is actually occuring on the source blogs.

Now, there are some folks who have had issues with Bloglines aggregation. The idea that an aggregator could do a comprehensive pull of an entire feed’s contents, and then repurpose that content (say, by potentially wrapping advertising around it) is an interesting issue. This discussion may get even thornier down the line if Bloglines decides to not only provide links to the comments and trackbacks, but spider them and pull them into their own environment as well. Stay tuned on this one.

Update:

It looks like this is actually a function of the Brandshift RSS feed, and not Bloglines. Still very cool.

Posted on

Paternalistic Relations

ZDNet’s David Berlind gives some well-deserved credit to Scalix founder Julie Hanna Farris for her willingness to engage in “public conversation that includes all of her constituents (the press, potential customers, casual onlookers, and even competitors).” I’m in agreement with Berlind on this.

He goes on to say:

“Public relations personnel cringe at the idea of executives diving into the blogosphere and mixing it up with the press and end users. Maybe that’s because of how the blogosphere prevents them from interceding when an executive is about to say something that shouldn’t be said. Personally, I think it makes both the executives and the company seem more open and approachable. When a vendor executive lays it on the line like that, he or she knows that the blogosphere is probably going to respond with brutal honesty. Just that sort of open invitation says something about a person’s belief in what they are saying and willingess to engage–unfortunately, it’s a rarity in our business.” (emphasis his)

Right on.

And then, Berlind’s first sentence in the pull quote seems especially prescient after reading the followup from Steve, who writes

“Let your executives have fun if they want to, ok? But guide them on what works/doesn’t. That’s our role as PR professionals.”

Whoa. Did I misread that? Please tell me I misread that. Steve…”have fun?” As if this is some kind of game? If one was a cynic, one could interpret that as a wink and a nudge…”we’ll let those dotty executives go and play in the blog-box, but we’ll be there to hold their hands in case they get off-message and, heaven forbid, communicate what’s actually on their minds.”

:soapbox:

It’s not about the veneer.

It’s not about a sanitized, perfectly-crafted, and ultimately synthetic message.

It’s about reality, warts and all.

It’s about real people, interacting with other real people.

:soapbox:

Posted on

NASCAR Fan Bloggers Jump Into The Race

Knight Ridder Digital (KRD) property That’s Racin’ has launched a blog network. And the voice is great. One journo (the editor of That’s Racin’), one pit crew member, and two fan bloggers (read “customers”).

Reading through the site today, it blew me away on a number of fronts:

1) It’s a blog. About friggin’ NASCAR. I was skeptical; now I’m not. It’s real and passionate. It works.

2) In the four bloggers, they have 360-degree representation. The journalist. The insider. And, most importantly, the two customers who had been doing this anyway because of their love of the sport.

3) I had never realized there exists an intricate, almost Newtonian, balance between mullets and karaoke. I learned something today.

Congrats to KRD for pulling this off! More here.

Posted on

The Business Blogging Field Guide, Part 7: The CEO Blog

Ah, the CEO Blog. Such the conundrum. A great opportunity…here is a means for an organization’s leader to connect and communicate directly with the market. At the same time, a great challenge…if done poorly, a CEO Blog can be worse than doing nothing. Such interesting times, no?

Although commonly called a “CEO Blog,” the name itself is a bit of a misnomer. Although a CEO Blog is oftentimes written by the chief executive of an organization, the name has been co-opted a bit and now commonly refers to a business blog that is written by any high-level executive of an organization. Heck, even BusinessWeek gets it right: “Execs are finding blogs useful for plugging not just their products, but their points of view.”

As in any other medium, there are differing takes on what topics are appropriate for a CEO Blog. There are some who take issue with a CEO Blog when it is injected with humanity. (My two cents…if a blog is going to be a medium of conversation, then it absolutely needs to enable a personality to show through, as long as the blog doesn’t become an exercise in pure narcissism.)

The real power of the CEO Blog, however, is that it can be a strong — and perhaps the supreme — means of differentiation for an organzation. Ultimately, products commoditize and best practices can be copied. The only real differentiators that are sustainable are the connections that form between members of an organzation and customers. The CEO Blog is an opportunity for the individuals who are guiding the ship to make these connections, and to make them real.

No, the CEO isn’t going to have the opportunity to connect directly with every customer, but that’s not the point. The point is: when an opportunity arises, if the leadership is accustomed to engaging in real conversations with real people, those leaders can make the most of a situation (more on this here and here).

“CEO Blog” example #1


Blogger: Bob Lutz
Role: Vice Chairman
Company: GM
Blog Location: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com
What’s right: “As I said before we appreciate all of the comments… positive and critical, keep ’em coming. I would love to address more of them directly if there were more hours in the day. Every so often, however, a comment cries out for a response so loudly that I have to put thumbs to Blackberry.”

“CEO Blog” example #2


Blogger: Bob Parsons
Role: Founder and President
Company: GoDaddy.com
Blog Location: http://www.bobparsons.com
What’s right: “As I write this, I am now 54 years old, and during my life thus far I suspect that I’ve encountered more significant life events than most people ever dream about. Here’s some information about me: I grew up in a lower middle class family in Baltimore’s inner city. We were always broke. I’ve earned everything I ever received. Very little was ever given to me. I’ve been working as long as I can remember. Whether it was delivering or selling newspapers, pumping gas, working in construction or in a factory, I’ve always been making my own money.”

“CEO Blog” anti-example #1 – Don’t do this!


Blogger: Peter Zencke
Role: Board Member
Company: SAP
Blog Location: http://www.sap.com/community/pub/blogs.epx
What’s wrong: “To access this page or item, you must log in to SAP.com. If you are an SAP.com member, please log in by entering your e-mail address or user name, and password.” That, and the fact that the last time that Zencke posted was in October, 2004, on the scintillating topic of “Translating Ideas Into Marketable Solutions.” Wieux-hieux.

Posted on

The Business Blogging Field Guide, Part 6: The Do-er

Whereas the Maven business blogs typically are written at a high level, cover a broad industry, and oftentimes do not overly associate the business blogger with the organization they are with, the “Do-er” blogs dive to a deeper level. In some ways, these types of business blogs could be thought of as a more narrowcast version of the Maven blog, concentrating on a particular area of expertise within a particular organization.

A number of large organizations – Sun, HP, and others – allow (or even encourage) developers to write about their area of expertise. Sun, in fact, has dozens, and maybe even hundreds, of bloggers writing about different detailed aspects of the organization. Although in Sun’s case, President Jonathan Schwartz has the largest number of hits on his blog (about 4,300 recent hits), the number of views by readers of the Sun Do-er blogs, in aggregate, outstrip his reach by at least 10:1. (And that’s just looking down the first 65 employee blogs at Sun…the actual number is probably much higher. Weren’t we just talking about this?) HP is testing out this strategy as well, but to date has taken a more cautious stance, with only a handful of Do-er blogs.

It is extremely important to note, however, that Do-er blogs in particular are not restricted to the high-tech industry. In fact, some of the most interesting stories and insight from down in the trenches comes from areas outside of high-tech. There are a number of medical professionals who are blogging about detailed topics, as well as individuals from midsize and even small companies in areas such as automotive repair and home improvement.

“Do-er” example #1


Blogger: Bryan Cantrill (middle)
Role: Solaris Kernel Development
Company: Sun Microsystems
Blog Location: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc/20050125

“Do-er” example #2


Blogger: Archie Reed
Role: Secure Identity Management
Company: HP
Blog Location: http://devresource.hp.com/blogs/reed/

“Do-er” example #3


Blogger: Ivan Best
Role: Proprietor
Company: PickupSpecialties.com
Blog Location: http://pickupspecialties.blogspot.com/

Posted on

The Business Blogging Field Guide, Part 5: The Customer Advocate

Continuing our series on customer relationships and business blogging, we’re now to where the rubber meets the road. Today, we’ve a couple of particularly salient examples where business blogging engages directly with the customer in order to better drive the direction of the organization. Enter the “Customer Advocate” business blog.

Customer advocate blogs (or advocate-styled posts within a larger, more general blog) are those that expressly engage directly with the customer, solicit feedback, answer direct customer questions, and generally reach out and act as a bridge between customers, their concerns and suggestions, and the organization.

When done well, customer advocate blogs will communicate full-circle, and follow the following steps:

1) Engage the conversation – Ensure that customers have a mechanism for providing feedback, suggestions, needs, wants, and the like.

2) Distill and group the feedback – Many of the feedback items may be around similar topics. Group those together and handle them in aggregate.

3) Determine your own prioritization mechanism – All feedback items are not the same. How will your organization decide which ones to address, and by when?

4) Report back – Let the customers know what’s going on. The customers took the time to share their thoughts…what is being done with them? This is the step that is often overlooked.

5) Get to closure – When things are done, let customers know. Don’t let the feedback mechanism be a black hole. If enough suggestions are submitted that don’t seem to result in feedback or action, customers are going to stop participating the conversation.

“Customer Advocate” example #1


Blogger: John Dowdell
Role: Support
Company: Macromedia
Blog Location: http://www.markme.com/jd/archives/006722.cfm

“Customer Advocate” example #2


Blogger: Robert Scoble
Role: Technical Evangelist
Company: Microsoft
Blog Location: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/01/06.html#a9118

(n.b. I’ve notes into both John and Robert, explicitly asking for followup on what their respective organizations are going to do with the feedback and suggestions they’ve received, per point (4) above…this post will be updated as responses arrive)

Update:

(31Jan2005) John has responded in the comments. Thanks for the quick response!