Emergence Marketing: blogging Archives

August 13, 2007

Leveraging social media to deal with a corporate public affair's nightmare

Johnson & Johnson is suing the Red Cross and other parties over the use of the Red Cross. Talk about one heck of a juicy story. The reality is that J&J is suing the Red Cross because it is licensing the use of the Red Cross symbol to for-profit organizations, while J&J holds trademarks to the Red Cross symbol since before the Red Cross actually existed.

So what is a VP of corporate communications at J&J to do in response to such a corporate public affair's nightmare? Send out press releases, hold press conferences, use all the traditional tools available to corporate communicators in crisis management mode? Not so for the J&J corporate com VP, Ray Jordan, who took his story to the J&J corporate blog, where he wrote up J&J's point of view in an everyday and personal voice.

The result? A large number of comments and stories generally providing broad support for J&J's point of view. While there are negative comments, the blog achieved what no other crisis communication's vehicle would have delivered.

(via Johnnie Moore)

[Tags: Red Cross Johnson & Johnson J&J corporate communication crisis management]

February 13, 2007

Blogging ethics

Yesterday Nate Ritter posted a comment on my story about Alaska Airlines - bringing up a good point about whether bloggers with a certain audience should refrain from lambasting companies with which they have had bad experiences.

Journalists have a clear code of ethics - as maintained by the Society of Professional Journalists. The code of ethics is built around the basic premise that journalists should "Seek Truth and Report It." One section of the code says "Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context."

But isn't that what a blog is by definition? This is not a news site. It is a stream of personal commentaries on marketing and sometimes personal experiences.

I am very aware of the power of the blog and its ability to harm in Google searches and the like - and that makes me pause when I have a bad experience with a company. But when the experience goes as far as costing someone $900 out of their own pocket, and when the experience is representative of a whole industry-segment's trend of disintegrating customer service - does that not give an individual the right to use his or her personal journal to retell the story?

[Tags: ethics blogging customer service worse practices airlines]

November 28, 2006

Bruegger's is listening! I am a fan now...

As many of you will have noticed, I have had my fair share of mishaps with my local Bruegger's. The last time I wrote about my experiences, Scott Hughes, the VP of marketing posted a comment on my blog asking for more information so that they could address the problem.

We went back and forth on email a few times and then two weeks ago I noticed that they put a new general manager in charge of the store. Not only has the service improved considerably, the whole mood of the store has brightened somehow. And then yesterday I get an email from Scott to inform me that they had made some management changes at the store and asking for my business, saying: "I hope you give us another opportunity."

WOW - Scott thank you for listening! You just turned me into a big Bruegger's fan!

And btw - your new Ciabatta's are great too!

[Tags: bruegger's customer service bagels]

November 14, 2006

Using an executive blog to "control" the message...

Nick Car over at Rough Type has an interesting post on how AOL Ted Leonsis used his blog to control his message. He calls it defensive blogging - a blogger who's main goal is not to engage in a conversation but to gain more control over the results that show up when people Google you.

[Tags: blogging conversation messaging]

October 17, 2006

The web numbers that count

Many people are confused about web metrics and especially blogging metrics - who's numbers can you trust, what is important, etc. The problem and the confusion become even bigger when you start using Ajax - which does not refresh the page when you request something -, and RSS - with most solutions not counting those readers unless they click through your article to come and read at least parts of it on your site.

Heather Green at Business Week spent some time looking at all those issues and wrote a great article on the subject - one that even non-geeks will be able to appreciate.

The bottom line is that we really need some new measurement sticks...

October 12, 2006

Dealing with information overload...

information overloadsm.jpg My friend Pito (from Blogbridge, where I am an advisor) muses about what next generation aggregators could look like (here and here)...a solution to deliver appropriate content to a person based on very minimal profile information.

This is indeed going to become one the biggest challenges in the near future - and not just for readers who are struggling to find the right content, but also for content publishers - including marketers, bloggers, reviewers, publishers, etc. - who are increasingly finding it harder to get their content in front of the right people (at the right time).

What makes this challenge especially complicated is that the information needs for people change over time. Some "information consumption" needs are episodic or one-time - like the need to find vacation-destination related information or college admission information. Sometimes, the "information delivery" or the "information packaging" needs also change over time - some days you might have a lot of time on your hands and be in the mood to read large amounts of detailed information while other days you are so busy that you can only consume headlines for those things that are most important for you at that particular point in time.

Another twist to this is that sometimes I may not even know what might interest me - especially when you are talking about the intersection of disciplines. I may have a high interest in social networking issues and not really know that there is a rich body of knowledge about that in the online gaming content providers, or in the systems-dynamic based learning community.

Pito thinks that the answer to this will not be a better aggregator, but something else. I tend to agree with that. But considering that the solution is probably one that combines human expert content filters with non-expert human tagging and automated technology based filtering and behavioral targeting solutions - what would it be?

...any ideas?

[Tags: information overload publsihing content aggregators]

August 30, 2006

Adoption is always slower than you think...

combo subscribe.png According to a recent report from emarketer reported in Dead 2.0, only 2% of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds. 88% do not even know what it means! Other stats show that only 13% have a good idea of what podcasting is. You can actually see the bell curve of adoption at work, with 12% of people still not knowing what spam is (via Business 2.0).

The RSS numbers also jibe with the numbers mentioned by Martin Nisenholtz from the New York Times in another Business 2.0 article (not online yet). RSS feeds at the NYT only generate 12.2 million pageviews out of a US total of 295 million.

[Tags: rss syndication ]

August 10, 2006

An interesting corporate blogging case study

Marketing Sherpa has an interesting corporate blog case study - showing that launching corporate blogs and the like may not always be the right thing to do...

June 21, 2006

Nominated for MarketingSherpa's Best Marketing Blog Award - can we have your vote?

Wow – I cannot believe it – only one year after starting this blog (plus a few months), Emergence Marketing was nominated for Marketing Sherpa’s 3rd Annual Best Blog & Podcast Award.

Of course, this is only a nomination – one among many outstanding blogs, some of which have been on my favorites/daily read-list for a long time!

But if you like what we’re doing with Emergence Marketing, then please take the time to go to http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=28308 and vote for us as well as for some other great blogs and podcasts which were nominated there – voting stops this Friday at Midnight!

Thank you!!!!

[Tags: blog award best blog marketingsherpa ]

June 13, 2006

Execs only read 9 blogs?

I just got an email from MarketingSherpa saying that: "According to 2006 study data, a typical business exec reads nine (9) blogs regularly."

Unfortunately, the source of the study is not revealed. But then again, the email was not announcing the results of some new study study - it was a call for nominations for your favorite marketing blog and podcast.

The deadline for nominations is Friday the 16th, and voting will start on the 20th.

[Tags: marketing blogs customer service marketingsherpa]

February 8, 2006

A new blog every second of every day

I knew it was big, but not this big. I just read Dave Sifry's latest report on the state of the blogoshere over at the Technorati Weblog. And I was truly amazed at the current size of the blogosphere, its rate of growth, and perhaps most important, the near-instantaneous response of blog coverage to world events. Listed below are major takeaways from Sifry's report Go here to read it for yourself.

* Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
* On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
* 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
* Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
* Technorati tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
* Over 81 million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day

January 31, 2006

Way to go Kate!

Kate, over at My Name is Kate makes a good point in a recent post about new criticism surrounding the latest McDonald's blogging efforts.

In the grand scheme of things, the blogging community is often times too self-centered and not inclusive enough. This most recent wave of innovation - whether you call it social media, web 2.0 or whatever - will only lead to success if it appeals to mainstream audiences. If we make it too hard for people to join the community or to use the products that come out of it, we will end up as a fringe movement in the annals of innovation.

[Technorati Tags: mblogging socialmedia web 2.0]

January 18, 2006

Teen's bold blogs alarm area schools

Haven't posted for a while, but this story in Tuesday's Washington Post lead to some serious Googling which uncovered a fascinating study by a grad student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that blew my mind. First the gist of the Post article. Schools in the D.C. area are waking up to the fact that lots of high schoolers are sharing incredibly intimate details about themselves in blogs, and on sites like MySpace and Facebook. For instance, " Sidwell Friends School in the District recently prohibited students from using their school e-mail addresses to register for access to Facebook, a widely used networking site for college and high school students. Before the holidays, Sidwell, Georgetown Day School in the District and the Madeira School in McLean wrote to parents to warn them about use of the site, and the Barrie School, in Silver Spring, recently asked a student to leave over the misuse of a blog."

So I decided to take a closer look at Facebook and see if it really is as sinister as this article made it out to be. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my approach to search is, well, "free-form" would be a polite way to describe it. Somehow I came across a paper by PhD candidate Fred Stutzman, with the intriguing title, "Student Life on the Facebook." You can read it on his blog. or bear with me for the abridged "executive summary."

Over the course of a semester, Stutzman analyzed the behavior of UNC students in social network communities. He was particularly interested in Facebook because in a previous study he found that 88% of freshman had active Facebook accounts. His current study was based on a sample of all undergrads in the class of 2009.

First mind blowing factoid from his study: On the first day of school, 3,193 freshman had a Facebook account. That was over 85% of the entire class, and many had already been using Facebook for many months. As it turns out, the months of June and July represent the greatest months of account creation. He found that in the two days following freshman orientation, there was a 200-500% increase in daily account creation.

Second factoid (not so mind blowing): Over the course of the semester Facebook accounts grew to encompass 94% of the freshman class.

Third factoid (this is truly amazing): While the number of freshman did not grow substantially over the course of the semester, the number of friendship connections expanded at a remarkable rate. As freshman made friends over the course of the semester, their social network size grew from 144,319 to 373,651!!!

The average number of Facebook friends a freshman had on day one was 46 and at the end of the semester it was 111.

Stutzman has lots of other insights into the behavior and interests of these students, including their political orientation and their favorite books, movies and music, ranked according to their political orientation. If you want to learn more, he can be contacted at fred@metalab.unc.edu.

[Technorati Tags: facebook myspace teens]

December 12, 2005

BlogBridge reader came out with some cool new features

BlogBridge (an open source project that I have been involved with) came out with some cool new features - the most important one for me being the "reading lists".

As you may have noticed, many sites have started putting out OPML reading lists that contain various RSS feeds. Take for example the Corante Marketing Hub (if you did not know this - I am a partner at Corante). As one of the subscribe options we put out an OPML reading list that enables readers to subscribe to all the RSS feeds that make up the hub. The only thing I have to do with Blogbridge to subscribe to those is to set up a guide with that reading list. Another nice feature is that I can instruct BlogBridge to automatically update the list if Corante changes it's reading list. So let's say that Corante adds another blogger to their marketing hub, I will automatically be subscribed to that one as well.

John Tropea over at Library Clips has a great review of the new feature set as well.

If you have not tried out BlogBridge, and you are an RSS junkie like me (now subscribing to over 500 feeds), you should try it out soon! I know I am involved and so probably biased - but it is an open source project and I don't make money saying this! I would have never been able to stay up with the amount of information that I subscribe to without it, and I probably would have never found some of the interesting pieces of content and fascinating bloggers that I found with it.

[Technorati Tags: blogbridge rss rss reader opml reading list]

November 29, 2005

The Corante Marketing Hubs went live today...

After a few long nights, three of the Corante Hubs went live today: the Corante Marketing Hub, the Corante Web Hub and the Corante Media Hub..

The Corante Hubs were designed on the premise that as information is increasingly becoming an abundant resource and attention is increasingly becoming a scarce resource—people will subscribe to people instead of subscribing to content.

With this in mind, we recruited a network of existing top-notch bloggers in the areas of marketing, media, and web technology, to act as reader's filter for what’s important in those fields. These experts continue to blog on their own blogs. At the Corante Hubs we aggregate their content and enhance it with technology to help readers track “conversations”, and find related content.

We also recruited knowledgeable editors for each hub, who editorialize what happens on the network—sometimes making connections that readers may have missed , sometimes taking the topics in a broader context.

We are planning on launching more hubs in the next few weeks, and are expecting to announce more bloggers to join the various networks in the next few days.

There are many other programs which we are planning in the context of the hubs - including running symposia as the one we recently organized in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, or like the ones we are about to announce in the areas of marketing, media and law - which provide an opportunity for contributors and readers to mingle and discuss issues and topics face to face.

So rather than force-fitting a traditional publishing paradigm on this new social medium, we are trying to invent a new one - in collaboration with our network of contribuotrs! It is indeed our goal to get the contributors involved in the governance and strategic direction of the Corante Hubs.

...more on this later.

[Technorati Tags: web 2.0 publishing corante]

November 19, 2005

How many blogs do you read?

The Wall Street Journal is conducting a poll...while I was surprised to see the highest choice being 5+ per week, I was more surprised by the results. Check it out here (via media guerrilla)

[Technorati Tags: blogs media wsj]

November 17, 2005

Communicating through bloggers is different!

There are two good posts on how PR folks and marketers are still clueless when it comes to using the blogosphere in spreading their message.

First is Jeremy Zawodny over at Yahoo - who writes about the PR agency, who also happens to represent Six Apart (so you would expect them to know better), spamming the Yahoo! Search Blog email contact for some new AOL video format.

Next is Bruce Fryer - who writes about how he lost a consulting gig after he would not guarantee a startup that bloggers would indeed pick up their story.

Are people truly clueless? Or is it just all too new and we're doing something wrong in communicating what this new social media is all about?

...personally, I vote for clueless...

[Technorati Tags: pr public relations blogs]

November 14, 2005

IBM sees blogging as marketing's next big thing!

For an update on how IBM's blogging strategy is evolving - check out the AdAge article from last week.

Here are some of the highlights - there are 15,000 internally registered bloggers, of which 2,200 people maintain an external blog. IBM's embrace of new media in marketing extends to podcasting as well.

When the "un-official" Chief Blogging Officer Christopher Barges is asked about blogging as a sales and marketing tool, he replies: "This is a way to get our expertise out there, not by shoving it down people’s throats, but by just starting conversations,” Mr. Barger said. “It expands our reputation, perceptions and reach of IBM, at the same time expanding the number of people we can learn from.”

It's good to see that some large companies do get it!

[Technorati Tags: blogging marketing communications]

October 26, 2005

Companies shutting down access to blogs?

Shel Holtz over at a shel of my former self has a great post on the stupidity of companies and schools stopping access to blogs in the name of productivity and safety.

Just ridiculous! If I were ever to find myself in such a company - I would quit on the spot. How can people be so short-sighted?

...oh well, like my mother used to say: "if all stupid people would fly, it would be permanently dark."

October 25, 2005

Advertising Age does not get it...

According to Advertising Age, US workers will "waste" the equivalent of 551,000 reading blogs. The details of their "best -guess" extrapolation of existing studies is that work time spent on blogs will be 2.2% of US labor force hours, and work time spent on non work related blogs will be a whopping 1.65%.

...ever though about the fact that reading non-work related stuff may actually increase your creativity in work-related activities? I think Tom Peters said that...oh, maybe 20 years ago.

...bummer - I just wasted 10 minutes on non work related stuff...time to get back.

[Technorati Tags: blogging blogs adage]

October 19, 2005

Companies embrace blogs

Unfortunately I could not make it to BlogOn this week - but via Shel Hotz I learned about the latest Guidewire Group’s BlogOn 2005 Social Media Adoption Survey that was released there.

The stats are unbelievable - 55% of companies use blogs - for both internal (91.4%) and external (96.6%) purposes. More than half launched in the last year and most of those in the last 3 months.

Here are some other noteworthy stats from the survey:

60% of those with external blogs have more than one - 17% have more than 5!
Expected benefits from external blogs are improved brand recognition (78%), improved external communications (78%), and improved customer feedback (66%)
Of those not blogging 70% are positive about starting one
the biggest challenges are maintaining enthusiasm and encouraging adoption

Shel points to the fact that the total numbers are probably off by a big margin as the methodology for getting to the numbers has not been made available and could possibly be flawed.

What strikes me is that there is nothing new coming through those numbers - companies are trying to force-fit the same old business models on this new social platform instead of looking at new ways to interact with the marketplace...a typical behavior when new innovations get adopted.

[Technorati Tags: corporate blogging technology adoption]

October 6, 2005

Another survey - how much do bloggers make from advertising

Qumana has a blog earnings survey - the answer - not much money there!

[Technorati Tags: advertising blogging blogs]

Edleman/Technorati blogger public relations survey

Edelman announced the result of a joint survey they did with Technorati. You can find the results here and here.

The study was meant to better understand the interactions between bloggers and corporations and guess what - there is a disconnect between how companies communicate with bloggers and how bloggers expect to be approached by them.

Some interesting results from the study include:

34% of bloggers blog to increase their visibility as an authority, 32% do it to create a record of their thoughts - so a majority do it for their personal image
51% blog about a company at least once a week - yet only 16% ever get a personal email inviting discussion
Executive bloggers are only half as believable as employee blogs - that makes for an interesting argument against CEO bloggers and in favor of employee blogs!

[Technorati Tags: public relations PR marketing communications]

September 21, 2005

Employee blogs - continued...

A great example of the power of employee blogs can be found at Mini-Microsoft right now. The blog does act as a virtual water cooler for hundreds of Microsoft employees, who feel comfortable venting their frustrations without fear of retribution. Note that both he (the anonymous blogger who writes the Mini Microsoft blog) and Balmer were profiled in BusinessWeek this week.

When you compare their points of view it makes for an interesting perspective of what may actually be happening at Microsoft. If not that, at the very least it points to the disconnect that exists between top management and the rank and file.
Balmer on company morale: "We have as excited and engaged a team of folks as I can possibly imagine"Mini-Microsoft blog comment on company morale: "Morale amongst the rank and file remains universally low"
Balmer on bureaucracy and leadership: "Great companies and the way they work start with great leaders. We have fantastic leadership team in place. Our leadership team is empowered..."
Mini-Microsoft blog comments on bureaucracy and leadership: "Microsoft is very top-down heavy; even as an exec VP, your every decision is second-guessed and interfered with by Bill and Steve.."

And I could keep going with more examples on accountability, innovation, etc.

Companies just do not "control" their message anymore. I think that is a good thing - and it calls for senior managers and communications professionals to start talking frankly and openly rather than talking like politicians - both internally and externally!

[Technorati Tags: employee blog communications]

September 20, 2005

Employee blogging

water fountain sm.jpg Intelliseek and Edelman just released a new white paper on employee blogging (here - pdf).

In this day and age, where more and more goods are being bought based on word of mouth, the paper analyses the reasons and motivations for employee blogging as well as the benefits when done right.

The report cites interesting research by Intelliseek in which they analyze the impact of certain situations on people's buying decisions. At the top of the list is negative word of mouth by someone they personally know (with an impact of 8.6 on a scale from 1-10), followed by positive word of mouth by someone they personally know. Further down the list is a positive comment about a product by an employee of the company - with a 7.0 impact. Further down is a positive comment from an individual on the internet with comment postings from others agreeing with the original poster - with an impact of 6.8. A negative comment by an employee has an impact of 6.6.

High on the list as well are positive comments by "experts" or credible professionals - with an impact of 7.1 for positive comments and 7.0 for negative comments.

The report also talks about CEO blogging and lists a few case studies where it works - both for internal communications and external communications. Unfortunately, they stop short of recommending whether CEO's should blog in the first place. While I am still not convinced that CEO blogging is the right thing, others, like Jeneane Sessum over at PR Blog Week 2.0 do think it is.

The report also touches on the benefits of using internal blogs for internal communications and collaboration. While I see the benefits for internal communications - it acts as a virtual watercooler - I cannot see blogs being successful for collaboration. Blogs enable non-threaded discussions - and that is not how people collaborate. The right metaphor for collaboration in my mind is the wiki.

[Technorati Tags: employee blog communications collaboration]

September 15, 2005

Such a German thing to do...

Daimler Chrysler has a blog for "real media" people only (here - via Business Blog Consulting).

Pathetic - but in line with the quality of their products. Yes I did finally buy a Benz for my wife a few years ago. That thing has been nothing but trouble ever since we bought it...the car has 60K miles and has been leaking oil for a couple of years, the air conditioning has an "unexplainable" leak, the electrical system goes berserk every now and again, and the car seems to need new breaks every few thousand miles. Oh and did I mention that the customer service department in most dealerships in the area sucks - like in being rude, expensive and non-helpful. They seem to have adopted the attitude "you should consider yourself lucky that you can use our product."

Although they do start out their "Rules of the Blog" on a positive note: "In the spirit of honest, free-flowing conversation we'd prefer you post comments using your real name" it quickly deteriorates after that -

Users must stay on topic within any given thread
Blog users must not post sensitive personal information. (I guess that includes what I just described as my personal experience)
The FireHouse.biz is not intended as a forum for outside suggestions, including but not limited to those which pertain to vehicle design, product attributes, marketing or advertising, and no such material will be posted.

What the heck do they want? Use the blog as a one way broadcast channel?

Oh well...time to short the stock!

[Technorati Tags: daimler chrysler mercedes]

September 8, 2005

The darker side of the Blogosphere

David Sifry from Technorati has a great post over at AlwaysOn on the darker side of the Blogosphere - the spamming world. He describes techniques that include:

Spam blogs - used to manipulate search engine rankings
Fake blogs - created to perpetuate click fraud
Comment and trackback spam - to increase their search engine ranking

The good news it that it sounds as if the search engine guys are collaborating to quickly identify these spammers - thus taking away the economic incentive of spamming.

The bad news of course is that spammers have already killed a lot of the "conversation" capabilities inherent to the blogosphere by making many bloggers turn off their trackbacks and sometimes even their comments.

[Technorati Tags: spam ]

August 26, 2005

Light blogging ahead...

I am going on vacation untill after Labor Day.
I may sneak in a few web visits, but it will be occasionally.

August 18, 2005

BlogBridge ships version 2.0

Disclosure: as many of you know, I have been an unpaid adviser to the BlogBridge open source project for a long time, and I am good friends with Pito.

That being said, you may still think that I sound like a commercial when I talk about BlogBridge - but as a power-user, I really do love the app.

I have been playing with many of the new BlogBridge 2.0 features as part of their weekly build program, and I advised on designing some - so I am very familiar with how they work.

The smartfeed feature is one that I use all the time now. I use it to create smartfeeds based on the Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub, and Findory services. But I also started being a big user of the smartfeeds where the system culls your own feeds to create a new synthetic feed based on posts that contain keywords of interest.

When I am busy and I just want to quickly scan what's out there, I just check my "marketing" and "PR" feed, or perhaps my "advertising" or my "blogging" feed and in a few minutes I can scan everything related to those topics written in the now more than 300 feeds that I subscribe to - very powerful. As I am refining my keyword filters, those feeds are getting better and better - to the point where I may want to republish some of them and share them with others...but that is 3.0 stuff...coming soon!

...of course, that brings up the whole legal issue related to remixing. Robin - I thought about your suggestion on that, and I like it - just do it and let's change the system by braking the rules!

[Technorati Tags: rss reader blogbridge remix]

August 16, 2005

Feedster comes out with top 500 list

Scott Rafer over at Feedster announced their first Feedster Top 500.

Some interesting points:

It's based on the most inbound links over time - as I said before I think that is a better indication of reputation. Technorati only counting links from the home page gives you an indication of current popularity - not reputation over time.
They editorialized some blogs out of the list - including most that did not have their own domain name - that is a bit odd.
They are only planning on updating the list once a month - since it's a historical index, that works for me.

[Technorati Tags: reputation feedster top 500]

11% of blog readers read rss feeds

That's what Nielsen says (here - via Micro Persuasion). The interesting part is that 5% read it through a client and 6% through a web-based site - confirming the roughly 50/50 split that Jupiter reported earlier this year.

[Technorati Tags: rss readers blogs]

August 11, 2005

Podcasting and blogging now mainstream?

Now that Adam Curry received $8.85M in VC funding for his Podshow and that even Donald Trump started blogging - does that make it all mainstream? (read about both in Frank Barnako's Marketwatch newsletter)

[Technorati Tags: podcasting blogging]

August 9, 2005

New ComScore study on bahaviors of the Blogosphere

Comscore Networks recently released a report titled "Behaviors of the Blogospher: Understanding the Size, Composition and Activities of Weblog Readers" (here (pdf) - via Red Herring).

Interesting findings include:

50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. population

Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each

Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women

Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections

Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online

The distribution curve of unique visitors vs. number of blogs is, as can be expected, a classic power curve - with a majority of blogs having fewer than 100 readers.

[Technorati Tags: blogs blog readers market research]

August 4, 2005

What will a blog do for my business?

John Jantsch over at Business Blog Consulting gets that question often and answers it on his blog - basically saying: "little to nothing". His main reasoning is that most people will put up a blog, post a few times and then stop - wondering why it did not work.

Ok - I buy that. But when I get the question - and I get it often as well - I tend to answer it differently.

The main benefits from using a blog in business - if you do it right - are:

A blog lets you disintermediate the conversations with your audiences. That is especially interesting for companies that have niche products or for smaller announcements. You are no longer limited to reaching people through mainstream media and you can actually start conversations with the "long tail". The funny thing is that while doing all that you will also be able to improve your relationships with mainstream media folks - as they read blogs as a source of information.

The second benefit - again, if you do it right - is that a corporate blog will let you increase the frequency of communications with your audiences. Bloggging will also give you increased "Google-juice" - which potentially could increase the size of your audiences. This is especially important for those companies where many buyers find their products through search.
Another benefit of course is that a blog puts a human face on your company - look what Scoble did to Microsoft
The biggest benefits may not even be in the areas of marketing communications and PR but in product innovation - getting the right customer requirements by engaging more of them in conversations - and customer service.

I did not make those things up. Many people much brighter than me have written about all those things long before me. But since I get that question often, I thought it would be worthwhile to post here. And again, none of those benefits will be achieved if you do not do it right!

[Technorati Tags: blog corporate blogging corporate blog pr]

August 3, 2005

80,000 new blogs a day

That is what David Siffry from Technorati says in his latest "State of the Blogosphere" report.

Other noteworthy numbers include the fact that they track almost twice the number of blogs then they did in March and 55% of all blogs are active.

Wow...

[Technorati Tags: blogs blogosphere]

July 27, 2005

The difference between blog aggregation and RSS search tools

Mary Hodder over at Napsterization has a great post on how the different blog aggregation and RSS search tools work.

One big surprise for me was how Technorati only counts links that are on the front page - so if a post with a link to your post scrolls down to the archives, the link count disappears.

Dave Sifry from Technorati comments about the pros and cons of doing that in the comment section.

Considering that in-links are a measure of a blog's reputation, and not of how interesting a blog is at any particular point in time, I am not sure that only counting home page links works.

[Technorati Tags: rss reputation]

July 25, 2005

New survey finds bloggers like money

A new Blogkits survey finds that the primary reason why bloggers blog is their love of writing, the second is to make money (here - via problogger).

[Technorati Tags: blogging survey]

July 21, 2005

Marketing Sherpa gets upset about stolen content

And rightfully so! (here - via Raving Lunacy)

While I have been a regular critic of some of their findings - especially those deviating from email marketing - I have found MarketingSherpa a great resource. It would be a shame to have great sites like that not be able to make it because of theft...

[Technorati Tags: marketingsherpa ip copyright theft]

Interesting new RSS stats

Bill Flitter over at Pheedo released some interesting stats on RSS usage (here - via Dana Vanden Heuvel).

Here are a few highlights from their findings:

Tuesday is the most active day for viewership, feed retrieval and click through - Saturday is the least active with click through rates 70% lower than on Tuesdays
morning scanners "view" more stuff, but late nighters "click through" more
CTR on ads vary from 7-11% depending on the time of the day - that is surprisingly high

[Technorati Tags: rss rss advertising stats}

July 20, 2005

More PR agencies are getting on the new media bandwagon

This morning I found the newly released guide to executive blogging by Ogilvy PR (here - via PR Opinions) - which makes for a pretty good read. I was surprised to find that Ogilvy PR did not launch a blog or announce some other services at the same time - especially after the Ketchum mishap - but then again, maybe I missed it.

As part of one of my consulting gigs - I have been advising a mid-size PR agency on how to enter the new media space. The agency is PAN Communications and while they have been working on this for a few months they aren't planning on rolling out their initiatives to their clients and prospects until the fall.

The process we went through was quite interesting. We knew that in order to make the new media part of the fabric of the company we had to get the company blogging. First we identified a few people in the agency that were long term bloggers and willing to get involved with the initiative. We then offered all employees the opportunity to have a personal blog on employeename.prspeak.com, the domain for the new corporate blog. We got about 9 volunteers who formed a blog team that meets regularly to share experiences, best and worst practices, and to develop corporate blogging guidelines. We also formed a client advisory board - consisting of clients and others who know the space well, along with those who are not that familiar with the space. The idea was to get guidance from the experts as well as better understand the needs of those that are not "in the know."

PAN started blogging on their corporate blog prSPEAK a little over a month ago and are really starting to get the hang of it. We also developed a new media training program, as well as some new media-specific offerings - which will be "beta" tested with a few of the advisory clients in the next few weeks. The plan is then to start talking about it as part of their daily business sometime in the fall - after a solid six months of hands-on learning.

What do you think? Are there any other best practices that we are missing out there?

[Technorati Tags: pr blog blogging PAN]

July 15, 2005

Corporate blogging and the effect on communications

There is a great article in the FT times talking about the impact of corporate blogging on customer communications. While it covers a lot of points that have been said before it is great to see a mainstream media pub write about them. Some of the noteworthy comments include:

The advent of blogging is starting to make companies think about how they will be expected to engage their customers and employees in two-way conversations in real time - whether they like it or not.

and

No one is sure how blogging will change the corporate communications business, but there is a view that companies should get involved - and now.

also these words of advice

There are a few key rules that a successful corporate blogger must follow: they must write in a chatty informal tone, tell the truth, update their blogs on a regular basis and be willing to accept any criticism that readers dish out...Corporate bloggers cannot afford to be wrong or - worse - tell a lie.

Hopefully people at Dell subscribe to the paper...

[Technorati Tags: ft corporate blogging blogging]

July 14, 2005

A passionate Dell service representative engages in the discussion

If you look at the Dell comment I made the other day, you will see a passionate Dell service rep commenting on my post anonymously - closing his/her latest comment with "i hope my comments have some impact on DELL CUSTOMER`s - a dell customer support person."

I found it worthwile to bring to your attention as comments are not included in my rss feed.

[Technorati Tags: dell customer service brand reputation]

July 12, 2005

Gabe started blogging

Since there has been such a long time between the time I announced that Gabe would be blogging with me here and his first post - I thought I would take two seconds to draw you attention that there are two of us blogging here now.

We hope you enjoy!

July 7, 2005

Providing a great customer experience

The Media Management Center, along with the Online Publishing Association conducted a study in which they discovered 22 customer experiences that drive up web site usage (here).

I like the reason they give for why experiences are important:

"Consumer experience is a critical concept to understand and act on in an environment where there are seemingly infinite media choices but finite human attention. For online publishers, it means going beyond providing content that gets good user satisfaction ratings to finding ways to involve and engage users’ minds and emotions."

The top 22 experiences are:

Entertains and absorbs me

Looks out for people like me

Regular part of my day

My personal timeout

A credible, safe place

Connects me with others

Touches me and expands my views

Makes me smarter

Turned on by ads

Easy to use

Helps and improves me

Worth saving and sharing

Tailored for me

Guides me to other media

Makes me feel I belong

A way to fill my time

Gives me something to talk about

My guilty pleasure

Tries to persuade me

Too much

Worries me

Annoyed by the ads

[Technorati Tags: web usage customer experiences web design]

July 6, 2005

I did my first Podcast with Robin Good

Yesterday I had the privilege of being interviewed along with Pito Salas by Robin Good. The topic was BlogBridge and the resulting article and downloadable mp3 are over there.

I'll write more about the review itself on the BlogBridge site (disclosure: I am involved in an unpaid capacity with this fun open source project), but I just wanted to mention here how much fun it was to work with Robin. He is not just another reporter who interviews people and "kind of" test the product - he is more of an activist reviewer. I had been enjoying his blog for awhile but never spoke to him before. He is very approachable, extremely passionate, and very thorough (we got some of the best feedback from him). And on top of that he offered to get involved with the project!

Thank you Robin! I'll put that big orange button on the site.

[Technorati Tags: robin good podcast]

July 4, 2005

Another one does not get it...

The new Doonesbury (here - via Jupiter Blog), says things like "Isn't blogging basically for angry, semi-employed losers who are too untalented or too lazy to get real jobs in journalism?" and other stupidities like that. I never thought I would really get involved with this type of conversation, but I agree with David Card over at Jupiter - this one is a little too below the belt!

I am very happy - thank you - and I never aspired to be a journalist. As a matter of fact and for me personally, blogging insn't reporting. I am just thoroughly enjoying to participate in this giant and fascinating conversation - that's all.

Got it?

(deleted)doonesbury

[Technorati Tags: blogging journalism]

Participatory journalism

According to the New York Times, an increasing number of traditional publications are embracing participatory journalism (here). In some cases, there is no editorial role anymore - something Kuro5hin has been doing for years.

The same issue also has an article on book writing vs. blogging (here). And another on the use of blogs in retail (here).

[Technorati Tags: publishing blogging journalism]

July 2, 2005

Blogging in France is huge

An article in this week's Business Week: "Let Them Eat Cake -- And Blog About It" (here - requires subscription); reports that 4.9% of the population - that is more than 3M people - have their own blogs in France. Contrast that to the 0.2% of Germans who blog and you get some sense of the culture differences.

Another great stat from the article comes from Skyrock, a radio station. They started providing free hosting for blogs - which attracted 2.3M blogs and $6M in ad revenue. Talk about a goldmine!

[Technorati Tags: blogging france]

June 28, 2005

Corante launches Futuretense blog

Futuretense, a group blog on the future of work edited by Elizabeth Albrycht went live today. Contributors include Dave Desforges, Jim McGee, Regina Miller, and Jim Ware - a great team and a great topic!

(I was in the know on that one as I have been doing some work with those guys, but it is still fun to see it come online.)

[Technorati Tags: future of work corante]

June 27, 2005

I took the MIT weblog survey!

And when you do, you get to choose one of those little logos.

[Technorati Tags: blogging mit]

June 26, 2005

Boston Globe picks on USWeb paying bloggers

The Sunday Globe today picked up on a story which Media Guerrilla reported a while back (here - Globe Story here). The story is that USWeb pays bloggers $5 to write favorable blurbs about their customers on their blog with a link (to increase "google juice").

[Technorati Tags: blogging transparency]

June 21, 2005

Awesome new release of BlogBridge

BlogBridge today came out with an awesome new release (you got to be willing to sign up for the weekly version to get it). Note that I am affiliated with those guys in a non-paid capacity...

This release really did a great job in helping you sort through your information clutter (if you don't have David Weinberger's problem - I do). Basically this release let's you create "smartfeeds" - collecting posts from within your own subscribed feeds based on specific criteria in one new feed. That is in addition to smartfeeds that can be created from delicious, flickr, findory, feedster and technorati...very cool!

Next job we will tackle tagging from within BlogBridge - if you have any brilliant ideas - let us know.

[Technorati Tags: blogging rss]

June 16, 2005

Dark Blogs - a case study

Suw Charman over at Strange Attractor and Corante Research released a case study on the use of dark blogs (blogs used inside corporate firewalls) in the enterprise. This one is focused on a pharmaceutical company and can be downloaded here as a pdf and distributed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons licence.

The first application for dark blogs within the pharmaceutical company was for Competitive Intelligence and the new blogging platform (from Traction Software) replaced static web sites as well as some Lotus Notes apps.

It won't be long before many companies start realizing the benefits of blogs, wikis and tagging software solutions to perform collaborative tasks like competitive intelligence, customer needs gathering and other knowledge management activities.

[Technorati Tags: dark blogs knowledge management]

June 15, 2005

How to get your blog discovered

David Pollard over at How to Save the World has an interesting post on how to get your blog discovered (here). He draws analogies with getting a book discovered.

Some of the things he recommends are:

that blog software developers add the capability for bloggers to add standardized blog-jackets to their blogs
that Amazon get in the game and list all blogs as they list books
that blog software developers incorporate simple ways to create samplers that make sense when printed for the f2f crowd
partnerships with hard copy pubs that cater to the same crowds

That also reminded me of a post that Mike Manuel over at Media Guerrilla (here) wrote about the importance of knowing those folks that have blogs in the long tail.

[Technorati Tags: long tail blogs]

June 6, 2005

The importance of full disclosure

Michael O'Connor Clarke over at Flackster exposes the guys from Blogworking in a great post on the need for full disclosure in blogs (here).

[Technorati Tags: disclosure blogging]

June 1, 2005

[funny] Confusing the heck out of people

A little while back I wrote a post about how confusing all this rss/xml stuff can be for the non-initiated (here). This morning I was laughing out loud when reading the post from Marc on the O'Reilly Radar (here) about the same topic...it is very confusing.

We should be able to develop a standardized "auto-discovery" mechanism for this problem. BlogBridge (disclosure - see my affiliation with them) does a nice job of autodiscovery (here) but we should be able to have something universal...no?

[Technorati Tags: rss xml technology adoption]

May 31, 2005

Blogging becomes a corporate job

According to a WSJ article today Blogging is becoming a corporate job (here - part of the free content today).

I can totally see that becoming a widespread trend. If corporate mouth pieces are to become better ways for them to participate in the ongoing market conversation, then blogs will have to become an integral part of that - if not totally replacing the existing static corporate web pages.

...which is exactly what I helped Blogbridge do. Granted for some large corporate sites something like this may never work, but I still believe that companies could do a better job at thinking through how to incorporate blogs within their corporate web sites rather than having them on the side.

[Technorati Tags: blogging corporate blog]

May 27, 2005

Blogorrhea by a barking moonbat anti-idiotarian

You don't know what I am talking about? Look it up...(and if you do...get a life)

This is a hoot...as we were waiting for the meeting to start yesterday - someone found a blogging glossary on samizdata.net (here).

[Technorati Tags: blog glossary blogging]

May 23, 2005

Open source radio to go live next week

Chris Lydon is back - this time with Open Source Radio (here is the new blog - here is the announcement). They are looking for ideas:

"We’re figuring this out from scratch, but here’s how we look at it: the Internet is our beat. We’re looking to capture the way people talk to each other online, the way they record their own stories. The blogs and the podcasts and the Wikipedia are not the story; the people we find through them are."

[Technorati Tags: radio chris lydon]

May 20, 2005

Blog survey results from Germany

Webpronews reports an interesting CRM agency Proximity blog survey done in Germany with 2,700 people (here - via AMA). The purpose of the survey, according to AMA, was to uncover "customers' perceptions about marketing/business blogs and the influence these types of blogs can have on the brand/company". Results:

91% of the blog readers expect a fast and appropriate reaction to questions and comments in enterprise blogs.
90% think it's important to make a clear difference between commercial and non-commercial content.
Of the blog readers, 54% form their opinions about products/companies on the basis of blogs.
51% of the blog readers visit product and/or corporate sites as a results of reading blogs.
58% of the blog readers, read them to find news and information they can't find otherwise.
57% of them are interested in the personal opinions of the authors, but only 43% are interested in the discussions.

Considering the very different nature of blogging in Germany I am not sure how well these numbers translate into other markets.

[Technorati Tags: blogging marketing brand]

May 18, 2005

Buzz, blogs and politics

The Pew internet & American Life Project just released a preliminary report entitled "Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004" (here - via smartmobs). One of their conclusions is:

“The blogosphere is clearly a major addition to the national discourse...But we need to be cautious with respect to the power of particular political bloggers. That power waxes and wanes depending on the sort of information available, the behavior of other public voices, and the tendency of internet forms and formats to evolve in a very short time.”

I have not read the full report yet but it sounds like it contains lessons that are applicable beyond political blogs.

[Technorati Tags: buzz blog politics]

PR agencies and blogging - do you need a balance?

Jeremy Pepper over at POP! muses about whether there needs to be a better balance between PR agency blogging vs. client work, or whether some PR agencies are becoming too blog-centric. (here). From a recent exchange at the Syndicate conference he says:

"One person asked how I balance blogging and PR, and whether or not I am worried about my blog overtaking publicity for my clients. This is a growing concern, particularly as you have to explain to clients why you are getting press for your blog, but not press for them. And, it's something that we should never have to address, because at the end of the day it is about the clients."

As more PR folks are starting to develop meaningful online presences through their blog, that is a great question to ask yourself when selecting a PR agency (for the sake of full disclosure - I know the folks at PAN (mentioned in Jeremy's posting) real well - both as a former client and a friend of the company).

David Weinberger thinks that PR folks should get out of the way, "connecting passionate clients with the public" (here).

My view, which I expressed earlier (here), is that while conversations are happening in the marketplace - sometimes without the involvement of the company - a company should get involved in those conversations. I agree with David that PR agencies should facilitate connections and then get out of the way. But there is another role that they can and should play - that of coaching clients on how to engage in those conversations in generally acceptable ways. While many web companies already know how to do that, I suspect that a majority of marketing executives, who must be increasingly getting pressured by their CEO to do something with blogs, have no clue how to do it. Having a trusted PR agency show them the way may be something of real value. And how else can they know how to do it, but by doing it themselves.

[Technorati Tags: pr blogging pan]

May 16, 2005

Consumers, blogs and trust

Steve King from the Institute of the Future has a great post over at the IAOC Blog (here – via Corporate PR) about the impact of blogs, and the trust that consumers have in those blogs, on purchasing decision-making.

While his research does not find much impact of blogs on purchasing decisions yet – he lists the reasons why people “trust’ a blog. Not surprisingly, those reasons include:

their view of the credibility of the author and content;
the amount of traffic they perceive the blog to be getting;
the number of other sites linking to the blog;
how active the blog is;
the look and feel of the blog

The questions Steve has are “will blogs achieve high levels of consumer trust, and if so what kinds of blogs will be trusted?? What will this mean for corporations and how they communicate with their customers?? What role will professional blogs play in customer communications??”

What do you think? Let him know if you have an opinion. The way I look at it, blogs will increasingly play a role in market conversations. As such, they will have an impact on the buying behavior of certain products – especially those products that tend to generate conversations and buzz. Companies, therefore, will need to jump into the fray and start participating in those conversations. And when they are ready, they have three options to do that:

do it directly and in a controlled fashion – that is when companies have one or more executives or PR employees blog within strict guidelines (i.e., stay on message)
do it directly but in an uncontrolled fashion – that is when companies encourage their employees to blog and give them the freedom to say what they want (there are many examples of companies embracing such blog strategies – Microsoft, hopefully IBM, etc.)
hire outsiders to do it for you – that is when a company hires existing bloggers to write on their behalf.

The second option is clearly the best strategy to quickly gain trust for what is being said, but unfortunately I suspect that many companies will not be able to embrace such openness. There are instances where the first strategy works in being able to establish trust (i.e., GM, HP, etc.). In general, I suspect that those corporate blogs will increasingly face an uphill battle in terms of upfront credibility. The last option is my least favorite option. Many companies will hire professional bloggers to stimulate online conversations on their behalf. Even under full disclosure, I think that there are very few people that can establish enough trust for themselves so that their personal trust can carry over to the conversations that they are having on behalf of the companies that pay them.

Of course, there is always the option of treating bloggers like journalists and influence them to write about your company and its products. You should always do that! But in addition to that I believe that companies have to participate directly in the market conversations as well.

[Technorati Tags: trust blog consumer]

May 2, 2005

Business Week's Blog on Blogging

Business Week's new Blog - Blogspotting - is a great blog to follow. It's informative (as with the post on Pew Internet research claiming that 9% of internet users now blog!), well written and every now and then outright funny.

Funny as when Stephen Baker discovers that now that he is blogging, his family is thinking that what he's doing during weekends looks a lot like "work" (I am sure many bloggers go through this phase). Or funny as when he discovers that a new religion blog contains Google ads for meeting "sexy black people" (here). That is better than the one where Prison Pete's blog (here) shows Google ads for correctional furnishings and pcs inmate phone systems.

I have been resisting to write about why people blog, because so many people do just that. But if it is true that 9% of the US Internet users blog – then that is getting mainstream folks to blog. And that raises the question – why do mainstream people blog?

Some probably like to have their "live" resume out there for everyone to see, some others are probably seeking to build a reputation amongst people whom they don't know, some see it as part of doing business (e.g., PR professionals, writers, etc.) and many probably look at it as an experiment. When I was discussing this with my friend Pito, he suggested an interesting alternative reason. In this increasingly freelance economy, many are probably using blogs as their “virtual” water cooler. With no one else around to talk about your random brain squalls you post them on your blog and hope that some conversation emerges out of that. I like that!

[Technorati Tags: blogging business week]

April 5, 2005

Information overload...

Wow...the number of Blogs focused on PR just went up from 30 last July to 180 today (according to the organizers of globalprnews 2.0 - via Constantin Basturea's weblog)

While this event sounds like a pretty interesting event (I am a firm believer in virtual events), it raises the bigger question of how to deal with information overload. As a marketer - how do I get through to people. As an enduser - how do I find the right content without wasting hours online everyday, and without resorting to the same sources all the time.

The good news is that there are part-solutions that emerge every day - blogs, RSS, tagging, social tagging, feed discovery, syndication, trust-based solutions, new collaboration metaphors (wikis, trackback, etc.), networking sites, filtering, (smart) aggregators, commenting, podcasting, and many more that I have probably not heard of yet.

The bad news is that most of these technologies are confined to a very small portion of the population. Indeed, according to a recent CNN Gallup poll (via Washington Post) only 3% of the population reads blog everyday, and 12% once or twice a month. According to Jupiter, only 6% have RSS readers at home.

Now with speed of adoption for new technologies increasing with every new technology wave, one can only hope that soon most of these tools will be broadly used. So I guess we better get ready!

[Categories: tagging tags]

Emergence Marketing

Thoughts on marketing, innovation, social networking, new products and the impact of technology on all those thingies

About

Upcoming Events

Recognition

Entries From the Corante Marketing Hub

Recent Entries

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Syndicate

Linking here

Recent Visitors

Copyright

Search

email subscribe

del.icio.us links

other interesting links