Advice for companies thinking of incorporating blogging into their marketing efforts (last of two parts).
In part one, we learned that there are three types of blogs: product-focused, issue-focused and/or personality-focused. However you position your marketing blog, it’s important to keep a tight focus on your content -- particularly when you’re just getting the blog off the ground.
According to marketing consultant Rick Bruner, “It’s often a good idea to limit your focus to one to two blogs initially, until you build up a following.” Stonyfield Farm has five separate blogs running on its site. Three are issue oriented, focusing on women’s, children’s health and environmental issues. One focuses on yogurt, and the last one chronicles the goings on at one of the company's organic farms. Now, I like yogurt just as much as the next person, but that seems like a lot of content to pore through. I favor the approach of Jane’s Blog that promotes the Oxygen Media comedy series “Good Girls Don’t.” It’s only one blog, it has a narrow focus -- and the fact that it’s absolutely hilarious doesn’t hurt.
Transparency is key
Jeff Jarvis says this about transparency in his blog: “When you are not transparent, people will assume their definition of the worst.”
Although Jarvis is writing specifically about journalists, I believe his sage advice applies to marketing blogs as well. For most of the blogs I’ve seen, it’s pretty clear what they are, and what their authors are trying to accomplish. And naturally, I think that’s a good thing.
There are a few blogs out there that are purely fictional. And even that’s ok, so long as it’s clear to the viewer that they are reading fiction. For example, Jane’s Blog states in the “about me” section that the author of the blog is a persona created by the TV series’ writers. Similarly, the by-now famous Gawker campaign was entirely transparent.
I have concerns with Sara Lee, which clandestinely produced the betagfree blog. Betagfree contained content and videos of real-life women discussing the need for a tagless bra. My problem was that it was not very clear that Sara Lee designed the blog. (Credit goes to a reader of Bruner’s blog for figuring that out.) I otherwise thought the company had a very cute idea. And yeah, I’m willing to concede that it’s unlikely that anyone other than a bra designer would’ve produced a blog focused on the need for a tagless bra. Nevertheless, by failing to disclose authorship, Sara Lee undermined the credibility of its message.
“Part of the nature of blogs is that readers are able to get a sense of the slant the author takes, and adjust accordingly,” says Dr. Don Cook, associate professor at the University of New Mexico. “Anything that comes off where the authorship isn’t apparent, people will assume the worst.”
Similarly, the Raging Cow flavored milk beverage blog by the good people at 7-Up undermined the credibility of the brand because the marketing blog lacked transparency. The company allegedly flew a team of young people into their headquarters for training, and then set them loose in the blogosphere to evangelize for Raging Cow. The problem is that the company apparently asked the group not to mention that they’d been enlisted by the company to evangelize the product. I guess that the idea was to make it seem like a groundswell of youths had organically emerged to express their love of Mad… errr, I mean Raging Cow.
“The public is smarter than that, and it damages the company's credibility down the road,” Bruner says.
Let the customers in
Of course, transparency isn’t just about doing the right thing. For Microsoft, transparency can also mean letting customers see behind the curtain. Cook observes that even Steve Balmer is posting to Microsoft’s Channel 9.
“If you’ve got the number two guy in the company paying attention to the blog, then you’ve got some great insight into what’s going on at that company,” Cook says.
Len Pryor, Microsoft’s director of platform evangelism, says that the basic premise of Microsoft’s Channel 9 is to shed light on what Microsoft is doing with its products. Pryor uses the analogy of an airplane that is going through turbulent airspace.
“When the pilot gets on the p.a. and explains what’s going on, I immediately feel much more comfortable,” Pryor says, “because I have information. When I don’t have that information, then fear takes over.”
Engage blog readership to obtain feedback
If done well, blogs are a great vehicle for companies to speak with customers and to obtain feedback from them. This is particularly true if your blog focuses on a technology product, or a complex or controversial issue such as consumer privacy. As I mentioned in a recent column on social networking sites, Plaxo, a service that updates and maintains information in your address book, does a great job using blogs to receive consumer feedback and then incorporating that feedback to enhance its offering. Similarly, Six Apart changed its pricing model apparently in response to customer complaints received via its blog.
Bruner says, “Customers had indicated that their pricing had become too complex, and the company took those comments to heart.”
Even Maytag’s Skybox team uses its blog as a way to gain feedback from customers.
Bruner conceived and contributed to a blog around the AdTech conferences. The blog provides a great opportunity for people who haven’t attended the conference to be able to get some of the perspective and insight. In addition to providing insight to those who weren’t able to attend, the Ad:Tech blog provides attendees with an opportunity to share feedback with the conference organizers.
Although Microsoft has a long history of encouraging customer and developer feedback, the company has used blogs to take this concept to a new level. Back in the day, Microsoft was active with CompuServe as well as newsgroups as a way to obtain feedback. And the company always had a visible presence at trade shows. Microsoft views blogs as a natural extension of all that.
“Blogs (and Channel 9) are places where we are able to more deeply share insight with the developer and technical user community, says Adam Sohn, who works on Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism team.
Developers want more access -- they want to have a bigger role. In this sense, blogging then becomes primarily a developer evangelizing technology. Blogs give Microsoft a predictable way to share information.
The bottom line
It seems like every week a few more marketing blogs are launched. And there probably are (or will soon be) marketing blogs that don’t fit any of the categories I’ve offered. Of this I’m sure: all marketing blogs should be transparent. They should be concise. And they should absolutely engage the reader.
“Marketing is a conversation,” says Microsoft’s Pryor. “If you’re not part of the conversation, you’re missing out.”
Alan Chapell is a consultant focusing on privacy-marketing -- helping companies understand privacy and incorporate consumer perception into product development. He has been in the interactive space for more than seven years with firms such as Jupiter Research, DoubleClick and Cheetahmail. Mr. Chapell is the New York Chapter Chairman of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and he publishes a daily blog on issues of consumer privacy.