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Posted on January 8, 2010
Learning How To Blog: A Short Exploration of Corporate Blogging
BY LAUREN MAYNARD
Why Hello There
Hi, I'm Lauren, the newest addition to the Room 214 team. As the company's new research maven, I'll frequently share my thoughts about all things social media and WOM. I'm looking forward to opening up some conversations with our readers about the way that you and I view and understand the ever-changing online world.
As this is my first proper post for Room 214, I've done a lot of thinking about the concept of voice in a company blog. I've spent the whole week obsessing over this post. What should I say? What do you, the reader, feel like reading? Will you connect with me? Will you comment? How does one begin the practice of being a consistent, passionate blogger for her company? I began to search around.
Forming a Relationship
Spend some time Googling best practices for corporate blogs and you'll find an overwhelming amount of information. You'll also find this depressing study from Forrester, which says that in 2008 only 16% of those who read corporate blogs trusted them. Yikes. People think corporate blogs lack honesty.
Knowing that stumbling block, it's important to consider why successful corporate blogs create a sense of trust with their readers. Jason Keath compiled a list of great examples of corporate blogs that I spent some time looking through. The radically different styles of each of those blogs reminds me of the importance of knowing your audience as a basis for forming trust. So do you know your audience? How is it that you come to understand your audience?
Jeremiah Owyang took the time to poll his blog readers and was kind enough to share the results here, which gave not only him but also his readers a chance to understand why people chose to connect with his website. Here at Room 214, we do this on a much larger scale, asking who, what, where, when, why and how as a basis for shaping communication with our clients' consumers.
Creating Space for Dialogue
But it's not just about knowing your audience. It's about having a conversation with them, a notion that Jason Cormier explained as the top of the Conversation Maturity Model. Marriott shared a lovely, simple detail on hosting Cleveland's 18th annual Polka Festival, letting me know about their engagement in the local community. Zappos taught me the best way to wrap a package for return, which is helpful to both me and them. All the blogs on this top ten list, because they are blogs, are clearly sharing with me. But, as explicitly clear with the Zappos example, they let me know that they are listening to me or, rather, the collective "me" that makes up their blog consumer. I enjoy this. I feel empowered to let them know what is on my mind.
Where Do We Go From Here?
It's funny to me that, on a high level, the basic tenets of a good corporate blog sound like the same basic tenets of a healthy romantic relationship: establish trust, listen, create a forum for open dialogue. Interesting. So here I am, pondering what to do with all this and hoping that I can begin a conversation. In the coming weeks I'll spend some time highlighting interesting conversations I find online. To kick it off, I'd love to hear of the ones you think are most interesting, whether that means successful, bizarre, failed, or other.
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Posted on October 23, 2008
Leveraging Virtual Communities
BY JASON CORMIER
One of our readers just asked me what "virtual community" refers to regarding point 3 in my post about the top 5 things Chief Marketing Officers want.
Although virtual communities can be defined within a broad range of social media properties (like Facebook) - CMO's are saying, I wish to leverage them so I can better "understand my target audience."
This discussion can quickly get more involved than how a company might use Facebook, because now we are talking about the use of intentional business tools. One local company and customer of ours that provides the kind of tools I'm referring to is HiveLive.
With the goal of better understanding a target audience, one of the advantages of using a virtual (online) community platform comes in leveraging multiple audiences. The audiences I'm referring to specifically are employees, customers and partners.
If you can effectively create the space through which these audiences can participate - you are fostering a new means of sharing, exploring and learning. The results? Better communication, marketing, innovation and loyalty.
If you would like to dig into this deeper, Jeremiah Owyang did a comprehensive report on community platforms for Forrester only a couple of months ago.
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Posted on January 18, 2008
Selling Social Media Programs Requires The Ability to Show ROI
BY JAMES CLARK
Who leads the Social Media Programs in the Enterprise: IT or Business?, this is the question Jeremiah Owang presents at Web-Strategist. It's a great post as it shows how social media and online community based programs still lack a clear position within the corporate structure.
Who's responsible for bringing together all of the active components (PR, Customer Service, Sales, Advertising, IT) to ensure the effort is properly launched and supported?
In our experience, the most well run social media programs have the stamp of approval from the heads of the business units - presidents of division VPs. In addition, these individuals were always active in the initial discussions. It was never a situation where the idea was conjured up by the PR firm, sold to the PR director, who took it to the VP of marketing, who then sold it to president. Too many dissenters along that chain of command, and that did not even include IT, which once they find out that the external PR agency recommended this program they go into bunker mentality.
Yes, social media and community programs are all the rage. New social media sites are popping up every day. But rest assured presidents and VPs are not seduced by being part of the rage. They want accountability and ROI.
Until one can show how these programs can integrate and drive overall business objectives, it's a long hard road. Even if you sell it in, by not backing it with ROI and measurable impact numbers, the effort will die on the vine. The social media guy will look cool, but after time the president just sees that person as line-item expense, and line-items expenses are favorite targets of cost conscious executives.
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Posted on January 2, 2008
Understanding Web Marketing
BY JAMES CLARK
Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on the many forms of Web Marketing. This is a great resource for someone seeking info on where to start or what to look for in online marketing.
Often times, it's difficult for Room 214 to explain what we do, and how we do it and where we play in the web marketing realm. If it's hard for us, heck it's almost impossible for the client decision maker to know where to go to get strategy and services for web marketing.
Jeremiah's post should help take one from unconsciously ignorant to consciously ignorant - a big step. Pay special attention to the Changes in communication require corporations to adapt and evolve paragraph.
Our approach is to understand what success looks like for our clients. Get an idea of what they are visualizing, then get our hands dirty understanding what resources (people and money) they have ready to dedicate to the project.
Sounds simple right?
Believe me, you really have to poke and prod a company to find out what the right strategy is. There are many subtle factors that can determine if an organization should they go out with a blog, podcast, vodcast, teleseminars, email marketing, campaign microsite, etc.
Stealing from the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you."
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