April 22nd, 2007 - Blogging For Business Success
(I’m diggin’ up the old drafts and I’ll be posting them here. My writing is very rarely worse for having a good editor hack at it, but occasionally there’s something interesting that lands on the cutting room floor. So, to kick things off, here’s the original draft of an article I wrote for BizTech Magazine. I had fun researching this one, though I was frustrated that I couldn’t continue my interview with Robert Scoble. He was driving home through the Santa Cruz Mountains and we lost our connection. I was never able to reconnect. Still, I managed to get some good material from our 15-20 minute conversation)
This is Microsoft, a company with a legal team capable of defending itself in Federal anti-trust trials. There is little question they could have banished his blog to “page not found” limbo and repaid his maverick publishing methods with a lifetime of courtroom proceedings. So how soon did he receive the first “cease and desist” notification?
“I still haven’t received one,” McLaws says. “But an employee told me that my graph was used in a presentation within Microsoft. That was pretty cool.”
Giving praise for audacity may not be in line with the reputation Microsoft has built, but perhaps Microsoft wisely had hesitations about derailing the freedom of bloggers. A notoriously libertarian group, you don’t want to get on their bad side. Perhaps worse, if you make it harder to discuss your products, they’ll stop doing it. It turns out Microsoft’s light legal hand paid off. Today, McLaws is one of 3,000 active bloggers talking about Microsoft online, encouraged by Microsoft through designations like their MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program. The voices may be punchy, candid and uncoached, but in the ever-growing blogosphere, no noise is bad news.
Robert Scoble, one of the blogging community’s most recognized members, achieved online fame during his tenure at Microsoft, podcasting interviews with Bill Gates, sparking discussion and debate on Microsoft Vista, and generally changing the face Microsoft puts forward to a more honest and human persona. Acknowledging the company has had to take its lumps, he feels Microsoft’s pro-blogging stance (built on lessons learned from Microsoft’s controlling efforts during the early days of developer communities like Neowin and Activewin) is paying off.
One main benefit is that a horde of bloggers leaves a trail of footprints all over the internet. “If you can get 3,000 people to write about something and link to something, Google rewards that with a high relevancy score in search results,” Scoble explains.
Scoble believes Microsoft’s Zune mp3 player has benefited from blogging activity. Many Microsoft employees are referencing the Zune in their blogs, and if you do searches on various types of related products, you’ll find Zune mentioned. “That couldn’t have happened with a company that didn’t have 3,000 bloggers,” Scoble says. “That’s one reason Creative is having trouble marketing the Zen [mp3 player] because they just don’t have that body of people with authority in the Geek community to talk about it.”
Microsoft reaps the benefits of all this attention in the form of increased traffic, product support, product and brand exposure, and much more. And they’re certainly not alone. Sun Microsystems has a community of around 1,200 bloggers, Dell and HP have active communities of blogs, and more companies are enabling employee blogs every day.
So there’s the answer: every company should embrace blogging and then make room in the parking lot for the dump trucks of money that will be soon arriving. Not so fast. Clearly a pro-blogging stance is a good fit for a company like Microsoft with a suite of widely adopted software products that are continually evolving, but how does a blogging strategy fit with a company that manufactures something as plain as, say, soap?
Scoble and I brainstormed this scenario via headset as he careened through the
After a short time the blog acquires some links and gets some referral traffic from Google. Turns out some people are searching for “environmentally friendly soap.” The traffic is small but one of the readers happens to publish a blog for stay-at-home moms and she writes about the product to her 300 daily readers, one of whom happens to be a journalist. Meanwhile, back at the blog, the conversation continues.
The scenario seems plausible, and illustrates two of the requirements for a successful business-oriented blog: a point of differentiation that generates interest, and the right person to tell the story.
You may notice that our scenario didn’t mention traditional web publishing influencers. There’s no quote from the CEO, little involvement from marketing and PR, and here we have a disheveled scientist representing a major consumer brand. Herein lies another lesson Microsoft learned: Steve Ballmer can bark all day in press releases, but it’s the voices from the frontline that have the most credibility. The secret ingredient is in-depth knowledge in niche areas and a general passion for the subject matter.
“You really want to find people who are passionate, and they will be the advocates of your company,” says Jory Des Jardins, a popular blogger and founding member of BlogHer, a community of women bloggers with 7,500 active members. “And the first place to look is not always in your Marketing department. You don’t want a blog to sound like a press release. You want to pull people in by their passion.”
You may find that you’ve got several passionate voices waiting to be heard. It’s common to use a shared blog and have multiple contributors. But the traditional struggle for one common voice, tone and style can definitely cause problems here. It slows down the speed of publishing workflow (a critical advantage of blogging software relative to traditional HTML sites), and generally tends to dampen the authenticity of the writer. Try to avoid draconian editorial controls and let individual voices ring out.
“The whole point about having bloggers on your site is you’re not trampling on them,” Des Jardins explains. “It’s all about these unique voices. It has really opened up the editorial process in a way I have never experienced before.”
A Corporate Blogging Manifesto
The most consistent failure point for business blogs is a lack of understanding of the best practices and principles for engaging in online conversations. It’s a pity more of them don’t visit Scoble’s “Corporate Blogging Manifesto” blog post from February, 2003. It’s a set of rules he published one week before he began his role as Microsoft’s most prominent blogger. Some key principles include:
Post fast on good news or bad: If someone says something negative about your brand or product online, Scoble has interesting advice: “Link to it. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don’t answer them, that distrust builds.”
Use a human voice: A good copyeditor can help remove typos, but a blog shouldn’t be governed by the rigorous editorial oversight seen in print and with traditional websites. It simply slows things down and makes it appear disingenuine.
Scoble strives for consistency between written and vocal methods: “I’ve written about 100,000 newsgroup posts, and a lot of those were very rapid-fire conversations. I still try to write that way, really fast, almost conversational.”
Have a thick skin: There are some shockingly candid voices out there that are unafraid to let you have it. It can be daunting at first, but remember that if you do things right you’ll find 50 supportive readers for every critic.
“If you’re not open to criticism, you shouldn’t be blogging,” McLaws says. “If you don’t have a thick skin, you better have your employees berate you first or something, because when you’re out there you don’t have any protection.”
Talk to the grassroots first: Journalists are increasingly adept at plugging in to grassroots conversations. Start at that level, create buzz and the newsmakers will follow.
If you screw up, acknowledge it: There’s nothing more embarrassing than when hidden mistakes are uncovered. Fess up, indicate how you’ll improve things, and get it done.
If you don’t have answers, say so: Don’t leave sensitive conversations hanging while you spend time retrieving information. This gives your audience time to speculate (by posting highly visible comments on your blog). Instead, let them know you’re investigating it and will provide the information very soon.
Know the information gatekeepers: If you need to respond to public voices on company issues, you want to have a handy list of co-workers who can get you the information you need promptly.
Be the authority on your product/company: If you’re blogging about your company and its products, you’d better be one of the smartest people alive on these topics.
Know who is talking about you: Monitor your backlinks to see who is linking to you. Search “links:your domain name” in MSN for a view of your inbound links. Visit those sites and thank them. Join in the conversation where appropriate.
Delivering the right messages is of course a critical component of a blogging strategy, but some key implementation details will also determine whether your blog is loved, loathed or just plain ignored.
Control spam: It’s amazing how quickly the Viagra peddlers will find your blog. These SPAM aficionados use automated tools to add links through blog comments and forum posts. Don’t let them ruin the conversation - add safeguards to prevent automated comment submissions and trackbacks (notifications that appear on your blog when another blogger links to you). Akismet is a popular anti-spam service for bloggers that is currently catching a half million spam messages every day.
Provide multiple access methods: RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds enable readers to sign up for updates using their feed reader or popular services like Google’s customized homepage or My Yahoo!. Setting up a free account with FeedBurner offloads the hosting demand for your RSS feed. You can also setup daily RSS feeds that are delivered to your subscribers’ email inboxes when new content is published.
Mix up the media: Podcasting enables visitors to see and hear the unique voices of your company. Scoble had great success with this, introducing the world to Microsoft engineers and talking about their projects. Help your team get its 15 minutes of fame.
Make your site easy to share: Add social bookmarking links to your blog. These enable readers to save your site to their online favorites, which are then viewed by others who may be browsing those sites. Common targets are Technorati.com, del.icio.us, Digg.com, Furl.com, and Newsgator.com.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Great article. The benefits of blogging is HUGE.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.