This session discusses issues facing companies that want to take advantage of the opportunities blogs afford.
Case Studies: Blogging, RSS and the Changing Corporate Marketing World
Moderator:
Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed, Inc.
Speakers:
Lisa Poulson, Managing Director, Technology Practice, Burson-Marsteller.
Elliott Ng, Director of Interactive Marketing, QuickBooks Group, Intuit, Inc.
Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Interactive Marketing.
Elliot Ng kicks it off talking about the long tail, how with all the small businesses they are trying to serve, all with very different needs, and how they can use blogs to reach all of these people.
Scott Wilder discusses the way Intuit has begun using RSS feeds to get support information to customers. One point he stresses is that it is important to know your audiences limitations. They are putting together blogs and wikis, but are taking their time to introduce it to their audience.
Lisa Poulson stresses the importance of having a blogging policy at every company before they have a “employee fired for blogging” story all over the blogosphere. She also says the best way to do this is to learn by making mistakes. Companies willing to make mistakes and fix them publicly. HP had a major case where a deleted comment made it to Slashdot, and got praised when they gracefully responded. HP has learned a valuable lesson, one other companies would do well to emulate.
She notes that while Sun has an extensive policy, Microsoft’s is, for the most part, “Don’t be stupid” and that has surprisingly worked very well for them.
Lisa also notes that every executive is different with regards to blogging. Some of it see it as a chore, others love it. They try to post very short items. It’s impossible to say if corporate blogging has affected company sales yet.
She notes that the phramaceutical industry may never blog, because of heavy regulation. She also thinks Google makes a mistake by not blogging. She also notes how some bloggers can be very excited and swayed by receiving mainstream media access. Elliot notes how many people want to be behind the scenes.
Scott says that transparency is important. If a blogger is complaining about company practices, but the company disagrees, the company should probably let the blogger know what it thinks, just so he understands their point of view. Lisa says that people tend to assume if they have a good idea that the company hasn’t thought about it, and that the company should let them know that they’ve decided differently.
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
Visit the InsideGoogle blog.
