Cool Marketing Thoughts

The key question asked is : when should companies blog? The anwser to that question isn’t a simple yes or no. Obviously, starting to blog when one of your products is under public pressure is ‘not done’. Although opening up a new channel to communicate with the consumers is recommended, even in a time of crisis. But in general such an activity should start in a quiet and convenient surrounding. Let’s all agree ‘crisis’ is not a state of convenience.

I’m a company. I have no blog. What can I do ?

- Nothing.
- Monitoring of the blogosphere
- Advertise on weblogs
- Sponsor weblogs
- Start a weblog yourself

If you do nothing, two things can happen. Nothing and much. If ‘much’ is happening it can be positive or negative. But you wouldn’t know it. You’d hear it when it’s already wide-spread, from other people. If it’s a good thing that happened, no harm done. If it’s a bad thing that happened, you’re screwed. Especially when you hear it from customers. Time for some external crisis-management. That’s going to cost you…

If nothing happens, your company is going broke. Stuff needs to happen in order to work and grow. That’s how things work.

Monitoring the blogosphere is a must, especially when you have a rather large field of contact with your consumers through mass media or advertising. Also if retailers are selling your goods. In fact, monitoring the blogosphere is something everybody should do on a regular basis to find out what the world is talking about. It can only be an advantage to stumble upon the competition and find out what they’re up too next. Don’t be afraid to type in their name too !

Advertising weblogs is like taking things to another level. You’re now actively participating in the blogosphere. Bloggers will see and criticize your advertisement. You need to inform yourself very profoundly about the audience of the blogs your ads will appear on, about the content these blogs maintain, about their past and present ‘writing’ behavior. Eliminate all chances of surprise. Arm yourself with statistics and information. Negotiate with the Ad publishing companies on which blogs you don’t want to be displayed on, on the type and period of the advertisement.

Sponsoring weblogs is yet another step further and really needs a higher degree of knowledge of the blogosphere. DO NOT TRY THIS if you are not in touch with bloggers, blogging or the blogosphere in general. Sponsoring weblogs as a company can either put your company on a socle or drag your name through the mud. A brand or corporate name is a company’s most precious possession. Be careful to what you link it, for the consequences might have a larger impact than you could ever imagine.

Starting a weblog yourself…

What kind of companies should blog? – Well, most of us agreed on the fact that (against all stats) companies in the public services domain are the most qualified to maintain a blog in order to communicate with their consumers, although the specialized companies from the industrial sector tend to have more of a blogging nature than the public services. The reason for this lies in qualified experience and knowledge that houses in those industrious branches.

The technological, industrial and scientific research sectors in general have in-house laboratories that actually develop the products or techniques that are being marketed by the sales department. This position lifts the company to a certain level of independence, knowing they have the knowledge many others are looking for. Displaying this knowledge, by means of a blog, not only shows off the courage to share data with the world, but also encourages consumers to feel more connected to this company and invites them to follow the progress of the evolutions they’ll probably be using in the future.

Consumers can interact and share their thoughts, can be asked to join in on beta-testing, can be invited to criticize on products or services. This generates an important and vital feedback that can serve as a barometer to poll the atmosphere on the consumer-side of the digital climate. It can be used to predict consumer behavior, and that is exactly what a company should aim for. Being able to predict.

So if you have the knowledge, how to decide what to share?

For this point, logical thinking is required. You can share anything you want, but there’s no need to act ‘trop’ generously with your technical knowledge. Competitors ARE watching, you can be sure of that. Common sense would indicate not to share sensitive data about upcoming ‘key’ products. There are ways to inform enough, but not too much. Be careful with your words. Think twice, read thrice before you push ‘publish’. Key questions to ask yourself :

Is this data sensitive ? – If in doubt, check with the authorized staff.
Obviously posting crucial facts of product phases isn’t a good idea. If you’re writing on in-house technology you ought to be well informed about any patents, pending patents and future patents. You need to be in touch with the engineers, the people who ’cause’ the things you write about. Ask questions about the ‘post-ability’ of what they are doing, ask what you can publish. It’s no shame to inform yourself.

Is this data relative and useful ? – Posting numbless crap causes your readers to turn away from the blog, leaving it useless and lifeless. You need to post relevant things your readers are interested in and are looking for. Bad content is bad publicity.

Word of mouth travels as fast as electronic current, numerous examples show what can happen. To name one : [Kryptonite Evolution 2000 U- Lock]. Digital result of this event can be traced easily on Google. [Check Search]. Needless to say this brandname’s life is over, or at least severely damaged.

Who are my readers ? - Are your consumers and customers also your readers or are your visitors guided to you by search engines and are they on a quest for knowledge? Be sure not to be too technical, neither to be too superficial. You need to find a balance in the approach of the different target groups you’re aiming for. If you take things really seriously, I might be a good idea to work with divisions or sections within the blog, separating the target groups and thus allowing a more direct and measured approach.

What if you’re a small company ? – Things are totally different then, and the blogstorm didn’t really go into this direction, because ‘corporate’ in fact implies that you’re a big company.

So… what’s the advice ? First of all : get in touch with your customers. Ask around if there is any interest at all in a digital communication link. Perhaps there is no need to get involved in this, because your company doesn’t really has anything to offer. If you have less than 1000 customers who actually buy your goods in real life, it’s easy to check it out and poll for any interest at all. The results from that poll should guide your actions.

If you have many products to offer or if you have a large stock of over 500 items that regularly changes, product blogging will take you as much time as selling the goods. Blogs do not serve as a sales platform and aren’t to be used as a forum. Blogs are a place of discussion. If there’s nothing to discuss about, there is no need to blog ‘corporately’.
Really. It’s no shame to ‘just’ have a website that says who you are, what you sell and where they can find you. If you want to interact about fixed topics, open a forum. The threads offer many ways of moderation and are in this case suggested. It’s more suitable, and it’s just the way to do things right.

How many times should I blog ? - That’s a question only you can answer. I think once every three days is a minimum for a corporate blog, because having the same info up for too long can also trigger people to wonder about any progress at all, and then blog about their thoughts. The content depends on the nature and goals of your blog. Technological blogs often leave weeks in between posts, and only post if anything remarkably has happened or evolved. It’s all depending on your audience. Do they expect news frequently, and can you offer that? Don’t start what you can’t handle/finish, serve your audience but don’t make yourself their slave, that will eventually result in bad content and then the readers will leave you anyway.

What should I blog about ? If you can’t answer this question, don’t start blogging.

Also read :

[Reasons For Corporate Blogging]
[Tips and Tricks For Corporate Bloggers]
[Social Networks, Blogs And Marketing]
[CharacterBlogs And Their Relevancy]
[Why To Forbid Blogging, At First]

In a time where consumers have become more daring and straightforward it’s hard for marketeers to gain control over the complete cycle of the products they market. With the ubiquitousness of media channels, consumers are finding new ways to push through their values, to set up rules, to protest against certain forms of marketing. It is with these last thoughts in mind that the Ogilvy office in Brussels had organized a ‘Blogstorm’ where it wanted to find out more about the perspectives of a blog in a marketing strategy, about blogs as a tool to gain more control on the process of the brand-awareness or to really stay close to your target groups. Blogs and marketing, a blogger’s view.

In short : Ogilvy? C’est quoi?

Ogilvy is a member of the WPP Group plc, one of the largest communication services companies in the world. There are more than 60 companies in the group, including J. Walter Thompson, Hill and Knowlton, Ogilvy Public Relations, Millward Brown, Research International, Mindshare, and Enterprize IG.

Through the WPP family, Ogilvy has access to top-rated expertise in the communications spectrum, such as design, research, public relations, identity, retail marketing, sales promotion and new media.

New media includes internet. Blogging just lately became a considerably big part of the internet, as Marco Derksen from Marketingfacts has explained. Interesting fact is that Marco doesn’t refer to blogs as being ‘blogs’ but instead, seen in a marketing context, he uses the term Consumer Generated Media. This is because in fact that is exactly what bloggers do, and why blogs are ‘here’. It’s a channel for consumers to communicate with the world. And aren’t we all consumers? Don’t we (as bloggers) generate text, sound or images that become published on the internet? Yes we do.

We are broadcasters of our own opinion, and to many marketeers that has become a scaring reality. Control is no longer fully in the hands of the producers, of the recommender. We, the people, have taken over. The game is the same, but the rules have changed. A suited approach becomes needed, wanted… desired. New channels of communication between producer and consumer cause marketeers to look for a different approach. A more cautionous approach.

Blogging is a revolution. A recent investigation by Forrester & Intelliseek published in june 2005, reveals following statistics (taken from Marco’s presentation) :

 

At this time, there’s about 1.4 billion postings a year (including comments), there’s an exponential growth active, with a rate of 30%, meaning that by 2015, 20 billion of postings will be made yearly by bloggers and commenters . The consequences are quite obvious. Consumers will have to be treated with care and respect, or many people will know about it. A good example of this is the Dell Case, in which some very bad customer service from Dell’s part had resulted in a posting on a blog, that got picked up internationally. Bad publicity at its best.

Dell is making a big mistake in the policy they conduct at this time. Currently, what they have is explained in a talk Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle had with Jennifer J. Davis, a spokesperson in Dell’s consumer products group. [Click here for that talk]

Regarding the negative publicity in the Jeff Jarvis story, he asked Davis about how Dell deals with ‘internetfuzz’ in general. Here’s a quote that says it all :

“It’s a policy of look, don’t touch — those monitoring do not respond publicly, nor do they try to make contact pro-actively. The best process for getting issues addressed is to contact us directly,” [...] “With our direct model, we feel like we already have a good, two-way communications channel with our customers.“

… Well. That says it all. Obviously over at Dell’s, marketeers are too blind to see the influence bloggers can have on a brand and its related products. Some crisis-PR, anyone? This needs to be prevented. There must be a way to approach consumers, to have a dialogue with and to be able to please consumers. There is a way to prevent this. It’s by means of a blog, but you’ve got to be careful…

So at Ogilvy’s, two discussions where at hand.

The first one was about the why’s and why nots of corporate blogging. Should every company own a blog? Is that necessary? Who should blog? What should be blogged? What about the competition?

The second discussion was about the ethics of marketing blogs. About the use, the history and the future of product placement through blogposts, about advertisement blogging and the use of editioral advertisement… this resulted in a change of thoughts about what’s tolerable and what’s not, and in a stream of ideas about the hows of blogging from a corporate point of view and a consumer’s point of view.

So far for the situational post. This is the context that explains Ogilvy’s reason for calling a meeting with a core of bloggers and marketeers, in order to prevent bad internet experiences with branding campaigns. In order to be able to use blogs for marketing purposes, without having to bear the wrath of the blogging community because of an unsuited approach.

The next posts will be about what was said.

Relevant links for this issue :

[Blogstorm @ Ogilvy's]

Posts online from other participating bloggers :

Introduction by [Franky] from Ogilvy

Maarten Schenk from SixApart : [One] – [Two] – [Three]
[Marco from Marketingfacts] the moderator/narrator
Smetty from Doppler and the Edublogs : [Podcast online soon]
Bart from [Netlash] unleashed
[Polskaya] about Marketing and CGM
[Hans on Experience]