Forrester Social Computing Summit in Cambridge - Part 1

Two weeks ago, Forrester Research held a one-day session in their Cambridge office entitled “Social Computing: Tapping Into the Power of Connected Customers.” I was lucky enough to spend the day with analysts Peter Kim and Jeremiah Owyang along with several other attendees across a broad range of industries, discussing examples of companies (both B2C and B2B) using the various aspects of social computing to better engage with their customers.

These experiences and interactions were all framed up with Forrester’s P-O-S-T framework, the cornerstone of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s latest book Groundswell.

Below is an overview of P-O-S-T, plus the five different objectives that should be considered for social computing* success. I’ll be exploring these five objectives in more detail in a future post.

*Note: According to Owyang, Forrester refers to these tools and technologies as “social computing” rather than “social media”. Per Owyang, “media” implies specific types of media used as a tool to connect. “Computing” implies a mix of culture, business, and marketing, and the impact these tools have to change our respective corporate cultures and organizational structures.

P-O-S-T

Before embarking on a social computing journey, you need to stop for a moment and consider HOW you’ll get to your destination. The order of the steps you take is critical; while many companies become enamored of a specific tool (like blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, etc.), the “T” in tools comes last.

Consider a typical scenario:

An executive at your company (or even yourself, despite your best intentions) reads about a new social media toy, or has a friend send a link to a new web 2.0 website, and she immediately falls in love and demands that you implement something similar. Sound familiar? If not, I can assure you that in most cases you'll blaze bravely down the road to fast-track an implementation (of what, you're not quite sure, because you don't really have the time to stop and ponder).

You implement, turn the key, start the engine, and then....nothing. Two weeks later no one is quite sure how to use this new toy, and four weeks later you're all collectively shrugging your shoulders (or worse, pointing fingers and tossing blame like a hot potato), and the project is doomed. Worse, in classic one-bitten-twice-shy mode, it's 10x more difficult to launch the next social media idea, even though you know this is something that your company has got to move forward with.

To help avoid some of these pitfalls, Forrester prescribes the following approach:

P – People: Where do your customers spendtheir time online? Are they already on Facebook, or Twitter, or mySpace? Is there an existing online community where they’re already connected with other like-minded individuals? If so, perhaps
you can use this to your advantage. If not, perhaps you’re better off looking somewhere else.

Bottom line: Don’t go with Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams mantra…you may build it, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll show up!

O – Objectives: What are you looking to accomplish? Today you can create a blog in minutes. The technology part is easy. But why are you starting a blog in
the first place? If the driver is to use blogs as a mean to communicate new products and services that your company offers, great. If you’re starting a blog
because your competitors have one, you’re doomed. You need to have a clear answer behind this, because these initiatives are long-term branding initiatives.

Bottom line: Without true clarity around what they are and what they’re for, you won’t have a solid framework in place to guide through the tough times or give you the backing you need when your initiative comes under fire from disgruntled factions within your company that may not be as supportive.

S-Strategy: How do you expect your relationship with customers to change? This is perhaps the most important question you should ask yourself, because
it forces you to ask yourself internally what you’re really hoping to get out
of this exercise. Are you looking to improve your transparency, and to build more trust with your customers? Are you looking to get direct customer
feedback from some or all of your customers to drive your product development
activities? Are you looking to use these tools as ways to identify those vocal brand advocates that to date have remained hidden, but now that you’ve found them, you can energize them as a secondary sales force to support your brand?

Bottom line: You’ve got to be absolutely
clear in your own mind how you can see the dynamic between your company and your customers changed as a result of using these tools and technologies. Otherwise, you’re not truly ready to jump off and run the risk of hitting one or more bumps along the road (some of which could have been avoided with some careful pre-planning.

T-TechnologyWhat tools and technologies can you use to support these goals? It’s no accident that the technology aspect comes last. Again, implementing the technology is the easy part. It’s designing your organization and your approach to these new tools where the real work comes in.

Bottom line: Choose the technology solution AFTER you’ve gotten clarity internally on WHY you’re doing this, what you expect to get out of it, and how you expect your relationship with customers to change.

Forrester’s Five Key Social Computing Objectives:

• Listening
  
• Talking
  
• Energizing
  
• Supporting
  
• Embracing

More to come on these five objectives in a future post. In the meantime, feel free to check out Forrester’s Groundswell site for more info.

What P-O-S-T means for other businesses:
Can social computing initiatives be done without following this approach? Sure, and it happens a lot more than any of us would care to admit. And most often, the technology solution is picked long before any thought is given to objectives or strategy, or even if this will resonate with one’s customer base. (joking referred to as T-O-P-S instead of P-O-S-T).

But if you subscribe to Forrester's theory, you’ll save yourself considerable time, energy, and money by adopting POST, and most importantly this can help you build some early credibility through a few quick wins targeted on some achieving some concrete business goals. Even if you're a small business that's considering launching a blog, start by asking yourself "How do I want to change my relationship with my customers?" If you can answer this, you've already safely navigated through several potentially dangerous pitfalls.

The concept of social computing often leads to murky waters at many companies, and with the first sign of blood the sharks will swarm, devour the victim, and quickly disperse, moving on to business as usual.

Don’t let your social computing efforts become wasted chum. Instead, consider using this philosophy to clarify “why to do it” rather than “how to do it”. Hopefully you’ll avoid a lot of pitfalls along the way, and will build some early successes that can translate to bigger initiatives to help enhance your business.

Good luck!

Top 5 Takeaways From Bazaarvoice’s 2008 Social Commerce Summit

Two weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend Bazaarvoice’s first annual “Social Commerce Summit” in Austin, TX. Designed to be a small, intimate affair with some of Bazaarvoice’s key customers, partners, and employees, this was a great collection of people who have lived in the trenches and lived to tell the tale (or multiple tales).

The list of attendees and presenters included Petco, Dell, Golfsmith, Wal-Mart, BestBuy, and others, as well as some keynote speeches from Josh Bernoff (co-author of Groundswell), Andy Sernovitz (author of “Word of Mouth Marketing), and Kelly Mooney, author of The Open Brand).

At PC Connection, we’d just recently launched Bazaarvoice’s Ratings and Reviews service across our 4 corporate websites. I was excited to go and hear about how some of the companies listed above have used these tools and technologies to their advantage, and to learn from those around me in the hurried conversations between sessions and at the networking events what ways this could really help change the way we engage with our customers.

Below is a list of the top 5 takeaways that I wanted to share. This became a much longer blog post than I had originally intended, so here’s a quick list of the 5 key takeaways that I wanted to share (feel free to click each header to read more and see what some leading companies are doing in this space):

Lesson #1: Negative Reviews: Expect them AND embrace them.

Lesson #2: It’s all about the art of the “Thank You.”

Lesson 3: Testing – Most of us DON’T do it!

Lesson #4: Ratings and reviews can go far beyond your web channel.

Lesson #5: True power comes from infecting your entire organization

As always, feel free to comment and discuss. It’s a fascinating area of study, with some tremendous opportunity for those of you that have not yet added this feature to you site, and for those of you that have there’s more you can do to extend the lifetime value of this commentary and feedback, benefiting your customers AND your organization as a whole.

Enjoy!

Lesson #1: Negative reviews: Expect them AND embrace them.

So what happens when someone says something negative about your product? First of all, note the question is not “if” someone says something, but “when.” Negative reviews, like many things in life, do happen. And in reality, they’re a necessary part of any dialogue between a customer and a company, or for a customer doing the research before making a product buying decision.

Think if you ended up at a site with no negative reviews. Imagine an endless list of 4- and 5-star products. Would you find this supposed mecca believeable? Doubtful. You need the negative reviews to give your site credibility, and to help spark ideas in potential purchasers.

For example, I recently went shopping for a new digital camera. Not only was it helpful to search for top-rated cameras, but also to look at customers negative reviews to uncover potential pitfalls I may not normally have considered. One review I read said the camera was a 4-star, and what prevented it from being 5-star was the slow shutter speed with a flash; the owner had small children and was a bit frustrated that the camera didn’t perform as well as expected when trying to take pictures quickly of his kids, especially indoors and in low-light conditions.
This information was extremely valuable for me. I didn’t buy this particular product, but did buy a different model…from the same company that offered these reviews. The negative review drove me away from the product, not the retailer, and in reality, the fact that the retailer offered this negative criticism yielded more trust in this brand and they ended up getting the final sale from me.

Some companies have gotten very sophisticated with using negative reviews, in some cases setting policy to contact all customers that rank products with a 1- or a 2-star rating. This helps give them better insight into problems with the product that they can take back to the respective manufacturer, but also helps solidify the relationship between the reviewer and the retailer.

Bottom line: Negative reviews inspire trust, and should be expected, not feared.

Today’s consumers expect to be able to rate products, but not all of those reviewers expect to hear directly from the company. This is a great way to surprise and impress those customers that have invested several minutes of their valuable time leaving comments on your site, and if you’re really committed to doing something with this information, you’re demonstrating the value your company places on getting this unfiltered criticism from your customer base.

Lesson #2: It’s all about the art of the “Thank You.”

Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing is an easy-to-read book (literally read in the airtime between Cincinnati and Austin) that harps on a lesson our parents (generally) taught us. Be polite, and always remember to say “Thank you.” It’s simple, it’s free, and it’s one of the most powerful things you can do for your customers, ESPECIALLY those that are not happy about your products or services (or both). And if they’re upset enough to spend two minutes on your site telling you what they don’t like, it’s very possible they could say the same thing on their own blog or in any number of other online outlets.

Regardless of what you do with this customer feedback, oftentimes a sincere, human acknowledgement of a problem can go a long way to defusing the potential PR bomb (and let’s face it…the major problems someone is experiencing is probably not really a secret internally, now is it?). And who knows? It could even turn a detractor into a supporter, depending on how you manage the interaction and take the criticism to heart.

Bottom line: The art of saying thank you I soften lost in the frenetic climate of today’s business, but this can make a huge difference..
It doesn’t sound like a truly ground-breaking tactic, but some leading companies have found great, systematic ways of doing this and are reaping the benefits of happier customers (because we all know that happier customers purchase more, and encourage their friends to do so as well, so they become a really powerful secondary sales force for us).

Important note: We’re not talking form letters, either, as sincerity has to be the underpinning. If you don’t really mean it, don’t say it, and certainly don’t set up an automated email auto-responder program to flood your customers with this baseless messaging, either.

Lesson 3: Testing – Most of us DON’T do it!
I’ve had the opportunity to work with several different companies in the online space, but no matter where I’ve been I’ve never felt like we’ve really got the whole testing thing down. No matter how much you want to A/B test and analyze and re-test, this area never seems to get the amount of attention you know that you should invest nor are you able to do as much as you’d really like. Well, I can breathe a bit easier, as apparently 75% of the Internet Retailer Top 100 also don’t test as much as they’d like, either.

So two reactions to that:

Reaction #1: Relief. I spend a lot of time looking at competitor sites and some great industry best-practice sites, and I’ve always gone in with the assumption that design choices and feature sets have been the result of careful testing, planning, and controlled execution. While this may be the case for some retailers, one of the sessions I participated in helped show (if for no other reason than the results of a show of hands) that that while that may be the case for some, it may not be the case for all of us.

Reaction #2: This means that any testing we are doing is a great investment of time and can almost be considered a competitive advantage (if we’re turning the assumption that everyone is testing on its head, and instead assume that NO ONE is testing).

Bottom line: Generally speaking, we’re never doing as much testing as we think we should, but neither is “the other guy”, so stop, take a deep breath, and know that you’re doing better than you think (just don’t use this as an excuse to stop moving forward).
While beta sites and usability studies and sophisticated multi-variant testing is a great utopian goal to shoot for, often a good sit down with your web analytics software for an afternoon can help you glean some significant insight into your actual user behavior. If you use this metric baseline and ask for some customer feedback on some proposed changes, you may be surprised at what you’ll find. And if you’re able to incorporate this kind of analysis pre- and post-campaign, you’ll be taking a big step in the right direction (and don’t have to feel so terrible about the lack of testing that you’re committing to on your websites)!

Lesson #4: Ratings and reviews can go far beyond your web channel.

Ratings and reviews the technology is relatively new. Peer recommendations have been around for centuries. What drives sites with this feature, just like the marketplaces of old, is that product sales are heavily influenced by “people like me”. And at the end of the day, this feature can go far beyond some stars on a website.

Petco has worked with Bazaarvoice in the past on a number of case studies highlighting their successes with integrating top recommended products into their email marketing campaigns (claiming to have 5 TIMES the click-thru rate than regular email messages, even those pitching the same products)! Best Buy have done some weekly circulars based on top customer rated products and actual customer review content. And some retailers are also experimenting with repurposing the actual review content itself in in-store signage, in essence tapping a vast network of customer content for free marketing and promotion of key products. It’s similar to in-store reviews and recommendations from staff I’ve seen in some good independent bookstores, but done on a massive, and highly systematic (read: repeatable) fashion).

Bottom line: You may be capturing ratings and reviews on your website, but don’t stop there when it comes to repurposing this marketing goldmine. Provided your terms and conditions are structured accordingly, you own this content. And unlike the finely crafted message your Marketing teams have agonized over creating, this raw feedback from your customers is a much stronger call to action for other customers than you’ll ever write yourself. Now that you’ve got it, think about where else you can use it (catalogs, circulars, flyers, email campaigns, in-store displays, box stuffers, etc.) The list is truly endless, and you haven’t spent a dime writing the content!

Lesson #5: True power comes from infecting your entire organization

This goes one step beyond lesson #4, and is truly the end nirvana of user generated content. It’s one thing to capture it, it’s another thing to repurpose it, but it opens up a whole new world when you let it infect your entire organization.
Here’s just a few thoughts on how this can improve areas beyond Marketing and Sales for your organization:

Product development: Give your dev teams direct customer feedback on features that don’t work or features they need to have reworked or redesign to work much better. Throw out the old surveys; this gives you a continuous feedback cycle that can significantly reduce planning cycles and get newer product versions out to the marketplace much quicker than ever before. Dell did this when they launched their IdeaStorm product (a site that enables customers to submit ideas for new Dell products and vote on the ideas of others, giving Dell a real-time engine to gather new feedback). One of the first ideas was rolling out a desktop that supported Linux, which was suggested, conceptualized, and made ready for development in mere weeks).

Product Marketing and Merchandising: Why pick Featured Products on your website anymore? Why not have those product choices dynamically generated based on the average rating and the number of reviews? Companies like Macys have done really well when it comes to dynamic merchandising, but this is after a product has been purchased and stocked. But really, ratings and reviews can serve as a great early warning system when it comes to product defects. Imagine a world where average ratings are used to drive purchasing decisions (here’ s a hypothetical purchasing policy in a post-ratings and reviews age: “We no longer buy large initial quantities of a product, but instead buy a pilot run, gauge the ratings feedback, and require an average 4.2 rating before re-ordering.” Think of the returns that you’ll save by pulling poorly performing products from your online shelves, as well as using data like this to drive the initial product purchasing before filling up your warehouse(s) with badly performing products?

Legal: Yes, it’s one that people do shy away from, but every now and then someone will make a claim (legitimately or otherwise) that your product caused serious harm, if not death. This obviously must immediately be escalated to your company’s legal team, but getting that feedback through this channel can give you an opportunity to hit claims like this head on and to defuse some potentially very public and damaging accusations BEFORE they become something uglier and nastier (and in the limelight).

Customer Service: In many ways, it’s a no-brainer. Your CS team is already getting customer feedback (positive and negative) via phone and email. Now they’re getting it directly from your site. In the phone/email channels, one-off customer situations come up, get actioned, and are put to bed, often with little fanfare. Ratings and reviews offers similar challenges in terms of how to manage complaints, but in some cases, where these complaints have warranted changes to a product’s design or updates to shipping policies, companies have the option to publicly comment on these reviews, helping put the company in a strong light by showing that they are open to comments from customers and committed to taking action to those ideas that are appropriate (and not afraid to comment using this channel). And given that these comments will live for the life of the product, it serves as a permanent advertisement to the fact that your company is listening, is responsive, and is committed to delivering the best customer service experience it can (one claim that many companies today can not in all honesty make)!

Bottom line: Adding ratings and reviews to your website is the first step on a journey of a thousand miles. The end state should be a completely changed company and culture, where this direct customer feedback becomes the lifeblood around which all company decisions are made. And along that long and winding road, there are multiple aspects of your company that will be touched (and need to embrace this change to make it a success.

Internet Retailer Releases 2008 Top 500 Guide

If you're looking to see who's the king of the e-commerce mountain, look no further that this year's Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. The guide gives you a comprehensive look at the top 500 e-tailers (based on overall web sales).

This year Apple made a huge splash, pushing SonyStyle out of the top 10. Collectively, the top 10 retailers represent over $45B...now let's just say those companies probably know a thing or two about the way an ecommerce site should be designed and the features it should offer.

I find this information extremely useful not just for competitive research, but for finding overall trends when it comes to design and usability. Recently I completed an in-depth study of some website analytics, hoping to better understand the buying behavior on our company's websites. What I learned about the actual behavior was very enlightening, but I really wanted to help move our capabilities forward in a much stronger fashion.

Using the same sites as a benchmark, I started looking at how certain retailers designed their own product pages. Perhaps I could find something in the way they had gone about similar challenges (presenting a mix of product data with user generated content like reviews. ways to incorporate multimedia into showing your products, tabbed browsing, global navigation...the list goes on).

It was very helpful to step away from what our direct competitors were doing and instead see what these top 10 companies have done to create the expected web experience in customers' minds.

This year's top 10 list (in order):

Amazon.com Inc. ($14.8 B)
Staples Inc. ($5.6 B)
Office Depot Inc. ($4.9B)
Dell Inc. ($4.2 B)
HP Home & Home Office Store ($3.4 B)
OfficeMax Inc. ($3.2 B)
Apple Inc. ($2.7 B
Sears Holding Corp. ($2.6 B)
CDW ($2.4 B)
NewEgg ($1.9 B)

Source: 2008 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide

What this means for other businesses:

Like it or not, we all live in a post-Amazon age, and if anyone has trained us on what the expect when you're buying online, it's these guys. Sometimes it helps to step back and look at what Amazon is doing, as well as some of the other bigger names like Staples, Office Depot, Dell, and HP Home and Home Office.

You might be surprised, or you might be inspired. But a single word of warning; remember that these sites do what they do because it makes the best business sense for them. Some features may seem counter-intuitive, but you can rest assured if you're seeing them on these sites, they've been tested and re-worked over time to make the biggest bottom line impact. So just remember this warning before taking a surgical knife to your site and trying to mimic exactly what Amazon does!

Marketing Sherpa's 2008 Email Awards - Dell Racks up Two B2B Wins

Back in March, Marketing Sherpa released their list of 2008 winners for their annual Email Awards Gallery. Dell was featured as a winner in two of the categories for their B2B business, both of which are featured below.

Dell's come a long way since the Dell Hell days on the community front, but this is the first time I've seen some press on the email front. Love them or hate them, there's definitely some great content in the email examples featured below that you should be able to take away and get some great results for your own business.

1) Injecting website ratings and reviews into Dell's email channel. Bold, direct, and much more effective than generic customer testimonials. I've only seen stats from Petco on the effectiveness of using this UGC in the email channel, but in their case it boosted click-thru rates 5 TIMES over their normal response rate.

Dell Email Example: Ratings and Reviews

2) Simple, direct messaging in Dell's auto-email response to abandoned cart owners. As any brick-and-mortar retailer will tell you, there's money left on the table when someone loads up their cart but leaves it alone somewhere in aisle 12. While your average $8/hr employee won't be motivated to chase the cart's former owner out into the parking lot, auto-emailing online shoppers is also a great way to recapture some of those potential dollars. I've seen cases in the past where retailers will send you offers for free shipping or 10% discounts if you return to the site and complete your purchase. Dell didn't offer either of these options, but did win Marketing Sherpa's award for this category for another direct, easy-to-digest auto-email reminder.

Dell Email Example: Abandoned Cart Auto-Responder

What does this mean for other businesses?
While we won't see results for either of these two uses of email, it definitely begs some thought.

1) Ratings and reviews are migrating from websites to other channels. Dell's example here is specific to email, but you're also seeing others out there (WalMart is one example) where reviews are showing up in physical stores as well. In many ways, it's the same idea you find when you go to any good independent bookstore and they've got featured reviews from employees that are also avid readers, only in this case retailers are leveraging the power of their customer's reviews to drive more customers back to their site and getting more of these visitors to convert.

Don't have ratings or reviews to share? Or are you in a service business that isn't in the "Rate This Product" game? I'd argue that even those businesses selling service offerings could still stack those offerings against a 1-star or 5-star spectrum, but consider using customer testimonials about your services instead. The end goal is to leverage content from your customers to market to other customers, given that you'll get much better results using this approach than from a canned and carefully crafted corporate marketing message, so you just need to consider how best to pull this off in the absense of a warehouse full of 5-star products.

2) Automate the emails you can, but make your message friendly on the eye and easy to take action. Ever gotten a text-only email from a company that screams "useless form letter"? Worse still, ever get a similarly useless email where you have absolutely no idea what it is you're supposed to do with it? Are you doing this today without even knowing it? Take five minutes and look at what you're doing today, then compare it to the Dell example above. You may be fine, but if need be, don't hesitate to get out your marketing scalpel and make a few targeted incisions. Your customers (and hopefully your CFO) will thank you for it.

And one last parting thought. If you're a small business that isn't using auto-responder email technology for cases like abandoned carts, new user registrations, or order/ship confirmations, you've got to get with your ISP right away.

NewEgg Took Some Chances...And So Should You!

According to today's article on Internet Retailer, computer electronics retailer NewEgg.com has come right out and said that they're not in the social media game just for the money.

Sales from a page on MySpace or a discussion forum on their Eggxpert community site are great, but really are just a means to an end: reaching their customers. Their core fan base (which is probably a better way to refer their customers in particular) are male gamer geeks who build their own machines. To cater to this audience, NewEgg has steadily added feature after feature and reaped the rewards of new customers (reporting that 50% of their new customers were from other customer referrals).

Is it working? Considering their sales rose 25% last year to just below $2 billion, it's fair to say that this pureplay online retailer has done well with their approach.

What does this mean for other companies?

Experiment.
Try some new ideas.
Give Twitter a chance.
Test out a blog, even if it's internal.
Consider what Facebook to mean to your customers.
Ask your customers what they want and then give it them in spades.

You don't have to do everything at once, but each feature you add strengthens your relationship with your customers that much more. Newegg was clear about this with their social media goal: Get close to the customer and give them a chance to provide feedback. The Internet Retailer article highlights some great technology features they've thrown at their site to accomplish this. But that's not the point. Layering on more features was done within a clear context (and not just doing it because the competitors are doing it).

Even if your competitors are doing things in this space, those without an overarching vision and blanket statement on why they're doing this and what they hope to achieve will fail when they hit bumps in the road.

Consider this caustic chain of events:

1) Company starts a new blog and customers love it.
2) Situation comes up for the company, one exec reads the post and gets worried about a possible lawsuit.
3) Exec brings the issue to Legal, then demands to know why the company is blogging and who authorized the project.
4) No one has a good answer and the blog gets shut down.

Sad ending to a venture that started successfully, but it could get worse:

5) Customers that were reading the blog are upset that it's been discontinued. They ask why it's been taken down, but there's no one around to answer their questions.
6) Customers get frustrated and walk away.
7) Some customers that are really upset get upset enough to blog about it themselves.
8) Other disgruntled customers start chiming in, and the ensuing groundswell threatens to damage the company's credibility.
9) Customers walk away, prospective customers avoid the company like the plague, and the company doesn't even know what's transpired.

Okay, so it's not all doom and gloom. All I'm saying is that you've got to have a good reason (and don't just copy the reason above because it may not truly be something that will help you) but once you've got that foundation in place you've got to go for it!

Experiment!
Play around and have some fun with it!
Make mistakes and learn along the way...if you're catering to your customers, if you ask for their opinion and you're prepared to take some action on some of it, then how can you go wrong?

Live a little. NewEgg took this approach, and it helped them add $500million to their earnings last year. So what do you think this will do for you?

Kodak Nominates First Chief Blogger

According to Internet Retailer earlier this week, Kodak recently announced they've just appointed their first chief blogger.

10-year veteran Jennifer Cisney was promoted from within Kodak's team of bloggers and is responsible for overseeing Kodak’s two official blogs, “A Thousand Words” and “A Thousand Nerds.” The first is about creative projects and life at Kodak, while the second is for about new developments from Kodak scientists and aimed at a much more technically-saavy audience.

A self-professed "nut" about photos, projects, and active blogger, Cisney will be able to build on Kodak's year and a half's worth of blog postings to help keep Kodak on top of the social media world. For a company that's been criticized in the past for not staying on top of the digital revolution, Kodak's put quite a lot of work into their blogging capabilities, and have clearly segmented their audience.

What Other Businesses Can Take Away From This:

1) Great blogging comes from (surprise!) avid bloggers. You're looking for someone who lives, breathes, and dreams in blogs, and is ready and willing to put finger to keyboard and fuse together content and creativity to engage your audience. It's not a race to the top but a slow, methodical journey in a single direction. When it comes to blogger, you're in it for the long haul. As you build up your audience, you've got to play to their expectations that you can provide something valuable to them on a regular basis. This takes love and dedication; Kodak's move to hire someone internally who's already in this space and loves what they do is clearly a smart way to go.

2) Blogs help give your customers a backstage pass to life at your company Through Kodak's A Thousand Words blog, I can see what it was to be backstage at Kodak events (this morning, Kodak's CEO annnouced it would be giving another $10 million to University of Rochester, keeping the vision of George Eastman alive. On a less serious topic, Cisney was at the Celebrity Apprentice afterparty, catching up with several celebrities. She's bringing us into her world, and, of course, providing some good photos to go along with her stories. Think about how blogs can provide you the opportunity to reach out with stories and images to help build your personality and brand online.

3) Lastly, blogs can showcase your new development and innovation. I can go to the 1000 Nerds blog and read up on technology developments, plus find out how to build myself a pararamic pinhole camera. While you're certainly not giving trade secrets away, what better way to showcase new developments in your business or trends in your industry and inviting commentary from your audience?

Clinton, Obama, and McCain to the Rest of Us: We Want Your Email Address!

In a former life, I worked for a music company and we struggled with a difficult question on our websites: When creating an email signup form, how much can you ask for (i.e., is there a magic number of fields you can request before someone abandons)?

It's not difficult technically, because frankly you can load up your form with as many questions as you can find space.

It's more difficult philosophically because there's a strong aversion to asking for too much up front (to use an overly cliched analogy, you can't ask for a marriage proposal when you're only considering a first date), but still needing enough to run a segmentable marketing campaign.

We settled out with the basics: first name, last name, zip/postcode, and email address. We did ask for gender and mobile number for a few key sites as optional data, but our general rule was the less on the page, the better. To be honest, we never set up any A/B testing to validate the theory, but it's a safe bet that four fields looks much less intimidating than a full page you have to scroll through.

This approach gives you some very basic info that you can use to segment your message (if an artist will be on tour in NY, does anyone care who lives in Ohio?). Our segmentation needs were not tremendous, but the zip code was definitely key, and having a first name enabled us to do some basic personalization.

Quick aside: Never, never go the route I've seen some companies where they'll use your name in the subject line like "SETH, CHECK OUT THIS FABULOUS DEAL." I'd love to see the open rate results for a hideous campaign like this!

Recently Anne Holland over at MarketingSherpa posted a great story touching on the three email signups for the current candidates. Check out the images below and what subtle (or not so subtle) messages they're sending:

Please note, I had to use an earlier version of Obama's signup form; after viewing once every repeat visit to the site would skip this page and take me straight to the main website

Hillary: "I'm having a really good time with this."
Thoughts: Intentionally or not, her image is looking in the direction of the info, implying that she's interested and aware of the people that are signing up. Top marks for going for first name, last name, email, and zip. Design is clean, submit button stands out, and she's also provided a means to skip the form and go straight to the website.


Obama:"I'm a family guy, I love what I do, and I'm ready and willing to show you more."
Surrounded by family, he's showing that it takes more than a candidate to pull off change. The button for submission is not "Submit" but a softer "Learn More". He's only opting in for email and zip, presumably because his team will use this information to start building your profile and will build on that consumer record through the various community aspects of his site that BarakObama.com offers.


McCain:"In addition to running for President, I'm also starring in a remake of Citizen Kane!"
The black and white image screams newspaper mogul from the turn of the last century, not someone who's in touch with today's world. And the biggest thing that stands out on this page? One giant red "Donate Today" button. Doesn't look for zip code, so no presumed intelligence behind the scenes with this data, just give me your email so I can add it to our list of thousands.



MarketingSherpa declares Hillary the winner, but I have to disagree and say that Obama's sends a much stronger emotional message (given that he's surrounded by family and is not striking it out on his own). But what really clinched it for me was that this design has grown over time, presumably based on feedback from the public at large.

Today I came across a another blog post from Bivings Report where the author criticized an earlier Obama email signup form that did NOT offer a way to bypass the registration and go straight to the site.

This is not the case with today's form, so someone in Obama's camp was either listening to the blogosphere or testing their site and found break points like this, then took action to make the necessary changes.

And in my book, if you're listening to feedback out there and committed to taking action accordingly, you're in the winning camp.

What does this mean for other businesses?

1) There's a fine line between asking for too little and too much from an email registration form, but if you're really planning to do anything meaningful with the data, you're going to need to grab a zip code at the bare minimum.

2) When designing your registration form, you want to make it easy and to have certain actions stand out, but adding a giant red "Give Money" button on your site skews your message to be more about money and less about building a relationship with a prospective customer.

3) Make it look fun! So many forms out there on the web are mind-numbing (ever been to a health care site to set up a user profile?), so take the time and do something to make it look half-way exciting. At least you can say all three candidates are smiling!

Starbucks Update - They're Listening!

Quick update and congrats to the Starbucks team. Within hours of announcing the new community site for soliciting online feedback, the votes started flooding in...and Starbucks is actually responding!

If you look at their top ranked ideas, many are flagged as "Under Review". And several people throughout the organization have publicly commented on the responses (with refreshing very little hint of any corporate-speak).



Should we expect that all of these ideas will get implemented?
No.

Should we expect that SOME of these ideas will get implemented, and quickly?
Yes.

Will Starbucks get some serious pushback if they don't follow up with their customers?
Absolutely.

And have they done a good job thus far with their responses?
Yes.


What does this mean for other businesses?
The challenge with social media is that it's all about pacing yourself and running the marathon, not blasting out of the gate at full speed for a quick sprint. Time will tell if they are committed to this for the long haul, but so far they're off to a strong start.

Links:
MyStarbucksIdea
Starbucks' Top Ideas
Official Responses from SBUX Idea Partners:

Starbucks To Customers: We Want YOUR Ideas

In the midst of a falling stock price and renewed efforts from CEO Howard Schultz to prop up the world's largest premium coffee company, Starbucks has taken a page out of Dell's social media playbook and launched the MyStarbucksIdea website.


MarektingProf: Starbucks Launches Its Version of Dell's Ideastorm

As they pulled out of the "Dell Hell" maelstrom, Dell launched "IdeaStorm" as a means to collect feedback from the community at large and funnel these ideas, critiques, and suggestions into their product development mix. It's been a hugely popular asset for Dell, and Starbucks is now going after something similar for themselves.

MyStarbucksIdea

Registered Starbucks users can log in and submit their ideas, vote on the ideas of others, and see progress updates on those ideas that have been officially chosen. They're also staffing this with self-proclaimed "Idea Partners", or subject matter experts across various aspects of the company.

So far, they're (a) listening to customers, and (b) staffing around the initiative to ensure they're being responsive to these ideas.

Looks like someone in Legal definitely spent some time working through the language around the site; in response to the FAQ question which ideas will actually get picked:

"Everyone helps decide by voting. Ideas posted to the "Popular Ideas" section of the website (determined by using an algorithm based on number of points, number of comments and recency of post) will be considered, but our Idea Partners may also choose ideas simply because they think they’re promising."

Notice everyone "helps decide" and that Popular Ideas "will be considered, but [Starbucks] may also choose ideas simply because they think they're promising."

So in one sense it's a legal out to say that Starbucks is not solidly committing to the most popular idea that the community votes on, but perhaps this is a calculated measure to ensure that the idea is in line with their brand marketing strategy. But then again, isn't the point of all of this about altering the course of your brand strategy to meet the needs of your community?

What does this mean for other businesses?

I'm pretty optimistic about how this will develop for Starbucks, and I can't overstate their point about "Idea Partners." These offerings can have some pretty dramatic implications for businesses (positive and negative), but you need someone at the helm to steer the ship.

It's safe to assume they're be some storms ahead and some uncharted waters (going back to the "storm" analogy from Dell's IdeaStorm), but it's not just about monitoring for negative comments and being proactive in responding the to criticisms out there. It's also about genuinely listening and then finding ways to react and respond to build your relationship with your community, and to grow your business in the meantime.

Mt Dew and "Choose Your Own Adventure" Online Video Mashup

Pepsi's done some interesting things online to build engagement with their legion of caffeinated Mountain Dew fans (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll come right out and say that I remember many a night as a teen drinking obscene amounts of it). Last November they launched an online casual game "Dewmocracy"; co-produced by Forest Whitaker, the game ended up bringing in over 600k unique visitors with average viewing times nearly topping 30 minutes.

But now they're making another online-only move, launching a 5-part action adventure serial that enables users to choose where they want the next episode to go (for those fans out there of Choose Your Own Adventure, this will sound somewhat familiar).

http://tinyurl.com/35rokx

How are they doing this?

Are they shooting multiple versions of the film, then aggregating votes and debuting the next episode based on popular demand?

Does this mean that rather than leaving most footage on the cutting room floor, they're actually polishing off each variation so it's ready for prime-time at the click of a mouse?

And will the buzz around this offset the production costs of doing so?

Pepsi execs claim this will be cheaper than the traditional :30 spot. I'll be curious to watch how this unfolds and to hear if it gives Pepsi the kind of engagement they're looking for from their fans.

What could this mean for other businesses?

We're not all ready to turn our business into a full-blown production video, or negotiate with a host of web portals to get placement for a user-chosen content offering, but this case study begs the question of responsiveness.

How responsive are you to customer feedback?

And what are you willing to do to act on that feedback?

It's one thing to ask for someone's opinion on which show they liked, and it's another thing to turn around and deliver on that expectation without batting an eyelash. We all know that it's far more complex behind-the-scenes, and these actions often require considerable up-front planning to quickly turn around and respond (it's safe to say that this kind of lightning turnaround must be planned into your customer service strategy from early on...true responsiveness is NOT simply bolted on after the fact).

Think about how you collect your feedback, and then how quickly you can ACT on that feedback. If it's all about turning casual customers into loyalist, a little pre-planning can go a long way (and finding cost-effective ways to offer customers choose your service delivered the way THEY want it is even better)!

AOL Scoops up Bebo for $850 million

This marks the second official M&A I've seen in the social media space this year (Prospero's acquisition by Mzinga being the first):

http://tinyurl.com/33mg92

It's natural to see a rash of acquisitions in the social networking vendor space like Prospero, given the number of vendors in this space. What makes Bebo stand out is that AOL now gets a huge global site and subscriber base (Bebo is #1 in UK, Ireland, and New Zealand and Bebo claims over 40 million global users) that they can leverage as a strong social media foundation to build beyond prior successes with AOL Instant Messaging.

Perhaps most importantly, this move also gives AOL additional advertising possibilities, something they'll need based on yesterday's announcement that Google has closed its deal to buy DoubleClick. This means that Google will now drive the text AND the banner ads you see; it's safe to assume that companies like AOL and Yahoo will have their hands full in this arena. Display advertising is one area where Google has historically lagged behind Yahoo, so it will be interesting to see what this does to their overall performance and to the advertising space in general.

Here's to an ever-changing web landscape!

McDonalds' New Internal Blog Initiative

According to Brandweek, McDonalds is now looking to a blogging solution to solve the age-old question:

How do you get feedback quickly from the troops on the ground to the team in the white tower?

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003723126

This move takes the Golden Arches to a new level, encompassing 15,000 locations in the US and Canada, supports English, Spanish, and French languages, and is open to every employee (not just official content about the company, but also more human-interest or personal stories as well). HQ will hopefully position themselves to be responsive enough to the feedback from the front lines, and are presumably using this data to drive better decision making around promotions, products, and other initiatives.

It’s also interesting to note that McDonalds reported record year-over-year sales growth for in-store sales, and that this feature is looked to as a way to continue that strong growth by improving internal communications. Not sure if we’d ever see this information, but it would be great to see a case study a year from now on what this program has been able to do for them (did it help vet new product offerings> Did they figure out new operational efficiencies? Were they able to gain insight on local promotions that were successful and transform them into a broader initiative?).

Given that this is an internal move, McDonalds is sidestepping some of the worries and potential pitfalls that blogging can expose companies to:

What if someone says something bad about our company?

What if we get sued for libel?

What if our competitors uncover trade secrets?

Going internal is a good first step before going live to the public. It helps show you what blogging means, what it requires to create great content (often underestimated), and depending on where the blog is targeted it can be a great way to get some feedback and ideas from across the company that otherwise may never have bubbled to the surface.

In McDonalds’ case, though, their Corporate Social Responsibility division had been blogging since January 2006.

Check out their first post:
http://csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com/default.asp?item=124518

They really struggled initially with the best way to use this medium. When you read the comments, you can see the mix of congratulations and criticisms, but most importantly you can also see that no one from McDonalds ever responded to the initial comments:

Lack of personal voice from the author
No way to contact the author
No response to questions posed to the author
Worse still: ...YOUR COMMENT WILL NOT BE DISPLAYED ON THE BLOG UNLESS IT IS APPROVED BY THE AUTHOR."

Not exactly an auspicious start or in line with social media best practices, but establishing this medium and openly embracing this world is definitely a start. Well known blogger Shel Israel posted a great open letter to McDonalds' blog author Bob Langert, about what steps McDonalds could take to make better use of this medium:

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/02/mcdonalds_blogg.html

From the article and to McDonalds' credit, Langert proactively sought out Shel as his biggest critic and solicted feedback on how to make things better. Another great move, but no public comments were ever posted from McDonalds about this, so it's questionable how much this advice was taken to heart. They seemed to have forgotten the fact that blogs are all about conversations to spark debates and new ideas, not veiled PR moments that are positioned to be something they’re really not.

Their CSR blog is a great tale of how you can take the plunge, but you must ensure you're ready to respond publicly to feedback that will arise AND that you're being completely transparent. I'm not sure what fanfare this was launched with, but the fact that there were only 26 comments on the first blog -- coupled with the policy about posts being approved -- makes you wonder how much openness we're actually seeing. Hopefully this new internal program will yield better results.

Top 5 Things to Say about Toshiba's Social Media Q&A Site

I came across an interesting Toshiba-sponsored social media site this week:

http://laptopexperts.federatedmedia.net/





Toshiba offers an "Ask the Experts" Q&A-type website, enabling visitors to pose questions about laptops and get answers from a team of accomplished bloggers throughout the industry. This offering is not limited to questions about Toshiba models only, but includes questions about competitors like HP and Compaq to provide the best service to the site's customers.

Each week, a third-party "expert blogger" answers questions to ensure responses (this is run by a small network of professional bloggers working behind-the-scenes that are NOT Toshiba employees). Other site visitors can also post their own responses directly.

While Toshiba hasn't said anything about how successful this venture is, there's several points worth noting:

1.) Toshiba has limited their content management requirements. It's similar to a message board in that site visitors can ask questions and get responses. It's unique because Toshiba doesn't have to directly answer any of these questions. Instead, they’ve contracted with a team of bloggers across the industry to post responses. Toshiba can (and hopefully will) respond to key questions to better establish themselves as experts in this space, but this is obviously their way to get started while minimizing required resources.

2.) Third-party blogger responses give customers straight answers and builds trust. This is open to all laptops (not just Toshiba), so the answers posted are clearly around solving customer problems throughout the laptop world, not a veiled sales pitch on why customers should buy Toshiba products. Again, this is clearly a branding initiative for Toshiba, not an additional sales channel.

3.) Customer can ask questions from different destinations. Besides asking questions on the website directly, Toshiba has extended their reach by creating banner ads for their ad distribution network, pointing users with questions on other websites back to Toshiba’s site.

4.) Participating in social media can begin by bringing together the right experts and your customers to solve real-world problems. Provided they're giving honest and timely answers, Toshiba adds value by bringing together two different groups to solve tactical problems, and therefore improving their brand's perception in the marketplace. Toshiba’s perception can be further bolstered as Toshiba begins contributing responses directly (in addition to posts from their blogging community), but they've shown that when starting this initiative, there are ways to easily test the waters before jumping into the deep end.

5.) Most importantly, this follows the #1 social media best practice for beginners: Listen, then contribute. Toshiba presumably saw this as a low-risk opportunity to get into this space and gauge the nature of customer questions BEFORE investing significant internal resources. As a bonus, this also positions Toshiba to respond when there are issues about Toshiba products, ensuring they can respond on their own terms and on their own turf, rather than letting these conversations happen without their ability to respond and turning a support call headache into a great marketing moment.

Enjoy!

Seth

Even Spielberg Gets His Own a Social Network!

Social networking is about to get another major Hollywood endorsement. Several inside sources have confirmed that Steven Spielberg is poised to launch a new social network, but interestingly enough this venture is NOT dedicated to monsters of the big-screen box office variety.

According to TechCrunch:

"The focus will be on users who’ve had or who are interested in sharing paranormal and extraterrestrial experiences. The new social network may also have original video content investigating alleged ghost and UFO stories."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/03/steven-spielbergs-ghost-town/

When you think about it, this has all the makings of a great social network:

Rabid fan base
Opportunities for members to discover those like them and network with each other
Multimedia (as users will presumably upload videos testimonials of themselves and their experiences as Spielberg takes a page out of his own Survivors of the Shoah playbook)

And knowing who's behind the helm, you can safely assume that there will be features above and beyond a message board of abductees trading images of mutilated cows.

It will be interesting to see how much visible participation you'll get from Spielberg himself, which, of course, would be the crowning achievement when it comes to launching a successful niche community.

This is definitely one to watch out for!

Uhaul Update - Mobile Advertising for Reviews!

I was recently sent this photo from Bazaarvoice, which was taken back in September 2005 by their co-founder Brant Barton.



This takes the idea of seeding review content in an offline world and kicks it up a notch. Usually you can find reviews repurposed via in-store placement (Wal-Mart) or in circulars/catalogs (Best Buy), but adding the mobile element takes it to a whole new level!

Uhaul Features Ratings/Reviews

The other day I had to reserve a Uhaul truck for moving some furniture. Despairing at what I envisioned to be an exercise in frustration, I was surprised to see how easy it was to reserve my truck online.

Uhaul clearly laid out the various trucks that were available, and then added a few pages designed for upsell (do you want to add a moving dolly or furniture pads?). Nothing special here, until you got to the page highlighting local labor that you could also get to help you with your move.

Depending on your zip code, which they've requested early in the reservation process, Uhaul then shows you local moving firms that could help AND ratings on those companies based on customer reviews:



So while they didn't add ratings to their own trucks or other Uhaul offerings that I could find, the fact that they were able to provide this additional service is a great move for them and much more helpful for me as a customer (not to mention something that would lead me to recommend their site to someone in the future).

Starbucks -- Hold that Latte for the Next 3 Hours!

This evening from 5:30 - 9pm this evening Starbucks closed ALL of it's retail stores.

http://tinyurl.com/26xfks

Is this mourning for the 600 employees that will be let go this year, in addition to the planned closing of 100 under-performing stores?

Not exactly. According to Howard Schlutz's "Howard Schultz Transformation Agenda Communication #8" (dated Monday, February 25, 2008), it's a time to stop, reflect on, and celebrate where Starbucks is at, how employees and partners should revel in the fact that Starbucks is the #1 global coffee company, and (in typical CEO-speak), "we are just getting started."

http://tinyurl.com/2wfa93

I have to admit this is first time I've seen anyone close an entire store like this for this long and bring all of the employees together. The only evidence I ever even remotely saw along these lines was stopping in a local Blockbuster around shift-change time and seeing the 16-year old store manager addressing a motley group of equally young and uninspired employees how they were going to do a great job that day, and for everyone not to forget to upsell customers on their download program so everyone could meet their monthly quota.

But apparently not so for Starbucks. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall earlier this evening, but I'm sure it was a good time had by all (all, of course, except for the latte-obsessed customers that would have had to head over to Dunkin Donuts or (worse) McDonalds to get some burned beans in hot water.

But there's just one thing that struck me about Mr. Shultz' posting. He says:

"We are at our best when we are entrepreneurial and courageous, push for innovation and reject the status quo."

I agree with the philosophy of this statement, certainly nothing tied solely to Starbucks. But with a company of this size and scope, and the rate at which new Starbucks can be deployed on the ground in any number of countries and still serve up a similar tasting experience every time, you HAVE to run on systems, not ideas.

So the question is this: How can you maintain the creativity, freedom, and the spirit of an entrepreneur AND still grow (and stay) big? How do you rise above the standard processes and KPIs and quarterly filings and jump off the cliff with the NEXT BIG THING?

Product Comparisons...It Could Cost You a Sale!

We're recently moving into a new home. Not being familiar with the area, I knew I'd need to do some research on available options to cover things like cable, internet, and phone. And to be honest, I put it off for as long as I could, fearing the inevitable frustration that was bound to come up.

After finding local providers, it was a toss up between DirecTV and Comcast. DirecTV's site (at the time of this posting) offered a pretty easy tabbed navigation element on the homepage featuring writeups on each of their packages:

Zappos Reports 40% growth in 2007...WITHOUT adding cool web features!

According to Internet Retailer, Zappos (the web-only retailer of shoes, apparel, bags, and accessories) saw 40% growth in 2007, hitting $840 million in gross merchandise sales.

http://tinyurl.com/ytpev3

40% growth by any means is a pretty staggering accomplishment. What makes this feat much more interesting, though, is WHAT drove the growth. According to CEO Tony Hsieh, this was "largely based on its emphasis on customer service, including its free shipping on all orders and returns and a contact center open 24/7."

What I find interesting is that statement is relatively devoid of any technology.

I'm sure it's safe to assume that there are technologies enabling the systems and processes that support customer service and returns processing operations. It's very possible that some of these systems and their supporting infrastructure were built out to support the business operation. But the fact remains that this growth is NOT tied to some of the more routine, front-end web improvements that typically get a lot of press (examples: adding features like ratings and reviews, offering multimedia elements to your products, improving cross-sell/up-sell merchandising capabilities, upgrading search, etc).

These results make for a great case study addressing a common misconception that a company's web sales are not where they need to be because of a lack of features. The better, more sustainable view is ensuring that the mechanics and processes BEHIND the website (customer service, pricing, billing, returns processing, etc) are firmly established and are there for the long haul.

Your website is a giant magnifying glass. It looks in and highlights the processes your organization provides (and also what it DOESN'T provide). Just because you can click and zoom in on a product image on your website doesn't mean that your business' web capabilities are top notch. Then again, NOT having this feature also does not mean that your capabilities are grossly lacking (though depending on the nature of your business, it's still a great idea!) and are the root cause for disappointing web sales.

Generally speaking, it's having the operations in place BEHIND the scenes that make or break your business, and it's these factors (which some may argue are not the most glamorous-sounding) that you need to have firmly in place if you're looking for similar, sustained growth!

To Blog or to Email? That is the Question...

A friend of mine had a client pose an interesting question: Why should I do a blog? Why not run an email marketing campaign to my customers instead?

It got me thinking; here’s five points I’d probably respond with:

1) Blogs are viral. Technorati today tracks over 110 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of social media content. With all of those blogs out there, that's a huge amount of content, and your challenge will always be rising above the tide. When your subject matter is interesting, engaging, provocative, blogs become a great medium for taking off and being passed from person to person or picked up by aggregator sites like Technorati and put in front of a mass audience (much broader reach than any email marketing campaign).

Emails can get forwarded to friends, true, but when you consider the fact that email filters are out to catch this kind of activity AND people as a whole are (mostly) trained to treat messages that have been forwarded from multiple sources along the way to you as suspect (i.e., “Please forward this to 5 of your friends in the next 24 hours and you’ll have good luck” anyone?).

Blogs can take off easily around the internet, and the fact that sites like Technorati can aggregate these ideas and get them in front of a bigger audience increases the likelihood that someone could find out about your idea/product/service/etc. This coupled with the fact that they can take on a life of their own through user commenting ensures that an idea can grow and mutate into something bigger and better (or worse) as it gains velocity makes for a very power viral tool indeed (especially when it becomes a conduit for bringing in new customers that otherwise never have heard of you)!

2) Blogs can have voice; email is a marketing message. People’s trust in corporations or corporate messages is on the decline, and it’s fair to say that in the Information Overload Age we’re constantly honing our own personal B.S. and filtering meters. The fact that ratings and reviews are so popular on e-commerce sites is based on the fact that consumers are willing to trust peers rather than a carefully crafted marketing message from a company (do a Google search on the Edelman Trust Barometer and you'll see some interesting results from a research firm that monitors trust online and its implications).

People come to blogs (especially those from businesses) looking for voice and a personality, and honesty. Done well, this can humanize your business. Your readers are seeking something that's more direct and personal rather than finely polished PR statements that are edited and sanitized for Wall Street investors.

Personality and honesty should always be the goal, of course, but it’s also fair to say that this can often be easier said than done (one reason many CEOs have a hard time doing blogs).

3) Email Marketing is selling, but blogging is branding. Along the lines of #2, your blog reinforces your brand. It's not just how honest you are, or how frequently you contribute to your blog (although these are important), it's also the way in which you respond to feedback. Since your blog offers the ability for your customers (existing or new) to comment back to your message, there's an implied responsibility to respond back and maintain an open dialog. This back-and-forth dialog will establish yourself and your company’s position as either being responsive to customer needs or, sadly, not responsive. The way in which you’re responding will speak volumes to who you are and what your company represents.

A classic case (and probably the #1 fear businesses have that prevent them from starting a blog in the first place) is customer complaints. If you’re open and honest in your dialogue, others that are reading your blog but not necessarily contributing could have their opinion swayed. And the person with the compliant could turn from a detractor to a supporter, or even an evangelist and lifetime customer. Why do blogs have this power? Because they’re all about building your brand’s perception in the minds of your customers.

4) Blogs have history. An email campaign by its very nature is a snapshot in time with (generally speaking) a defined start and end, and (hopefully) a purpose. I’m on Borders’ mailing list and have numerous email offers like “40% off for the Next 2 Days Only”. It’s a drive to get people to their site and get them to purchase quickly, but after the 2 day window expires the promotion ends and we all go about our business. Those of us with weaknesses for books have ended up with a heavily discounted book added to their collection. If all goes according to Borders’ plans, we’ve also added something else as an impulse buy and will come back again.

But a blog is a timeline and has history over time. Each post you make builds over time, and with it comes content that remains and grows. This very point helps give your blog weight (if you’re posting regularly over time, you’re sending the message that you’re serious about this and you’re looking at it as a true communications tool, not a hobby that you try out for a week or two and then abandon. Your readers can search your blogs over time as you build your body of content, and the longer you’re around, the more content you generate, the more people will find your content, the more people will link to you, which increases your chances of attracting new customers.

5) Blogs have great search benefits. Consider that with an email campaign, I’ve got a number of hurdles to get through before my message gets to the actual recipient. Even if I can get my legitimate email address through AOL, Yahoo, MSN, or Google, I’ve still got individual spam filters to contend with. And despite the fact that my content is valid (I’m not selling Viagra or naked celebrity photos, unless of course that’s your business model and you’ve got legitimate opt-ins that you’re mailing to!), people’s spam filters may trap your message and you may never see it.

Not so with blogs. Since they live out on the web, your readers choose to read your content or not, and can be alerted for new posts with things like RSS alerts that can dynamically update web-based RSS aggregator sites like iGoogle or Netvibes. And since the content you’re generating lives on your site, you’re building a mountain of content over time.

It’s fair to say that the more content you’ve got, the better your chances for getting found on Google, but it’s a more accurate statement to say that the more content you create, the more legitimate you establish yourself to be, the higher the number of people that will link to you, and therefore the higher your overall search rankings (all without paying any additional money to search engine optimization firms to improve your rankings).

"Socialommerce"

Just came across this article, which has some really interesting points about the intersection of ecommerce and the social networking craze.

"Social Media and Online Commerce: Birth of Socialommerce"
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3628497

This is the first time that I've come across this particular team (made up of "social" + "commerce"), but the general theory hold true: you'll trust your recommendations from your peers, and more and more will look to this information to drive decisions in your life.

The article's focus on Google's interest in buying Bebo (owns 65% of social networking market in the UK) is okay, but it's really the theory behind how these forces are changing our buying patterns that are far more interesting.

Here's a quick excerpt:
"Nielsen reports 78 percent of people trust their peers' opinions. This is neither a new concept, nor new to the Web (e.g., epinions.com).
What is new: social networks make so much easier to disseminate the information. And people want to disseminate information."

But consider that the dynamic with peer reviews is not just go-to-Amazon-and-get-the-highest-rated-MP3-player. It's also about making lifestyle choices, which is where the real power comes in.

Now you can look to these networks to answer bigger questions like:

What should I spend my tax refund on?
Where should we go for vacation this year?
What's the most fuel-efficient hybrid out there?
What's the best school I can put my kids into?

We're a classic case; the new school that we chose for our daughter was decided in large part due to GreatSchools.net, which profiles schools in the US based on statistical data (test scores) and layers in personal reviews (from others that have attended or currently attend). Granted it's not apparent who these people are that have put in these ratings, but at this stage it's a great barometer for the feedback out there (and again, was a critical tool for us in making the decision where to settle).

Consider also that one of the biggest vendors out there providing rating and review capabilities Bazaarvoice (powering reviews for Walmart, Best Buy, and Office Depot) also enables you to syndicate your review to sites like Facebook, you can see how these companies are looking to increase the power of a user review by syndicating it out to these far more powerful newtorks.

It's not just a question of what you thought of a product, but how to get your review to as many people as you can. And then it's a question of how to find that info, which I suppose is where Google fits in.

The times, they are a-changing!

Doors Are Officially Open!

At long last, our doors are open and we're taking the first trek on our own summit journey. It's been long in the making, with considerable preparation and planning, but we've now officially left the safety of our tent parked at the base of the mountain and are headed up the winding path to the next camp. Everest, here we come!