Archive for April, 2006

“Markets are conversations” is my favorite quote from The Cluetrain Manifesto, a seminal book on marketing in the 21^st century. I like it because it encapsulates the essence of the networked markets we find on the internet today. After so many years of being “talked to” by big business, people have finally got their voice back – and man are they talking! Within a few minutes on the internet any business can find out how people feel about their particular product or service. The voices are loud, honest and genuine and the blogosphere has supplanted message boards and newsgroups as the place where the majority of the conversations are taking place online.

So if markets are conversations (and they are) and the blogosphere is where the conversations are taking place (and it is), then it follows that businesses can use blog specific search engines as a marketing barometer to measure the level of interest in their products or services. Let me give you an example.

I recently met with the marketing manager for Durham Business School (DBS). The crux of the meeting was to convey that no one (in the blogosphere) was talking about their MBA program, which means that either the DBS MBA program is unremarkable or it is simply off the radar of people who are discussing MBA programs (or some combination of the two). This should be very disconcerting especially when you contrast these results with results you get from entering the main competitors into the search engines.

So how do you check whats being said (or not said) about your company/product/service? Easy. Just enter your comany name + product/service + any other descriptors to one of the many blog search engines (my favorite blog search engines are BlogPulse, Technorati, Google and IceRocket) and see where that takes you. Join an existing conversation or get one started. Good luck!

I met the marketing manager for Durham Business School (a top ranked UK university) yesterday to follow up with a previous meeting I had with the Associate Dean. The following is from an email I sent as a follow up to the meeting.

My discussion with you was based on the assumption that DBS was desirous to increase its brand awareness in the marketplace so as to either increase total enrollment and/or increase the competitiveness of its admissions standards by increasing the number of highly qualified applicants.

The point of the presentation was that for organizations to be competitive in the new marketplace they must:

1) have a product or service that is remarkable (i.e. worthy of receiving mention),

2) plant the seeds that will facilitate online conversations that revolve around their product or service

3) be an active participant in these conversations

Furthermore, I also wanted to assert that prospective students do their due diligence on the web. They will go to the home pages of prospective universities, but ultimately the decision on where to apply largely will be influenced by the advice given to them by the online community.

The blogosphere is where the majority of the conversations are taking place online. Entering “Durham Business School?” and MBA into the popular blog search engines reveals that there is very little being said about DBS’s MBA program especially when you contrast that with what is being said about INSEAD and London Business School. This means that either the DBS MBA program is unremarkable or it is simply off the radar of people who are discussing MBA programs (or some combination of the two).

I have solutions that will dramatically increase both the quantity and quality of online conversations about DBS. The following is a summary of these solutions.

1) Join the Blogosphere

• Provide the tools, training and encouragement so that DBS students and faculty can effectively participate in the blogosphere. This would be a fantastic way for DBS professors and students to gain peer recognition, increase their networking opportunities and improve DBS’s online visibility. As an aside, the Boston Globe recently ran an article on the career benefits of blogging.
• Train DBS staff how to monitor and participate in outside blogs for DBS related conversations.

2) Give access to the brand (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html)

Give potential students, students and alumni access to the brand and invite them to participate. Make it easy for them to get involved with your brand and affect its direction and maybe even its values. This can be accomplished by creating an online space that combines collaborative tools with lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations and lecture podcasts thus encouraging conversations between all of the above mentioned principals.

This would provide the following benefits:

• Give prospective students an opportunity to experience lectures and discussions found at a top European MBA program
• Create goodwill among DBS alumni by giving them an opportunity to refresh their knowledge and keep current with the latest trends and analysis
• Create value for current students by archiving all recorded lectures and collateral material and by letting them discuss and collaborate with a broader base of people

3) Empower your alumni network

Your alumni should be your most ardent salespeople. One way to ensure that they keep DBS in the front of their minds is to provide them with a place online where they can interact and collaborate with their peers. Your current alumni website has some great tools but lacks the community building features found in the most vibrant online communities. In short, Agora needs an overhaul.

These suggestions are progressive – even a bit radical. However, you are in an industry that has been commoditized with little to no room for core product/service differentiation. I believe that if you want to increase enrollment and increase DBS’ Financial Times rankings, you are going to need to be a bit radical.

Can bloggers make money was a debate that took place yesterday in the WSJ between Jason Calacanis, co-founded Weblogs Inc., and Alan Meckler, who is chief executive of Jupitermedia Inc.

This debate, as well as the Slate article proclaiming the death of blogs, is really short sighted in my opinion. The value of blogging does not come from Adsense revenue, but rather in the intangible benefits that blogging provides – improving your career opportunities, relationship marketing and improved online visibility just to name a few. Obviously it’s much easier to quantify the ROI when your only metric is Adsense, but to assume that is the only ROI metric for blogs is making a huge mistake.

Giving credit where credit is due, I found the following article from the Boston Globe in a post from one of my favourite bloggers – Jeremiah the Web Prophet. As the title of the article would suggest, the author suggests that being an effective blogger can lead to better career opportunities. I couldn’t agree more. Not only has this blog been great for business, but it has also been great for my personal development and peer recognition. The author identifies the following 8 reasons why blogging is good for your career.

1. Blogging creates a network. A blogger puts himself out in the world as someone who is interesting and engaging — just the type of person everyone wants to meet. ‘
2. Blogging can get you a job. Dervala Hanley writes a quirky literary blog that got her a job is at Stone Yamashita Partners, a consulting firm that ”tries to bring humanity to business.” Hanley says the firm was attracted to her ability to put her business experience into personal terms on the blog.
3. Blogging is great training. To really get attention for your blog, you’re going to have to have daily entries for a while. At least a few months to get rolling, and then three or four times a week after that. So you will really get to know your topic well.
4. Blogging helps you move up quickly. To escape the entry-level grind, you can either pay your dues, working up a ladder forever, or you can establish yourself as an expert in the world by launching a blog. High-level jobs are for people who specialize, and hiring managers look for specialists online.
5. Blogging makes self-employment easier. You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.
6. Blogging provides more opportunities. Building brands, changing careers, launching a business — these endeavors are much easier once you’ve established yourself online.
7. Blogging could be your big break. Visually creative types can blog beyond just text.
8. Blogging makes the world a better place. Blogging is about sharing, contributing and collaborating. You’ll be getting loads of Karma in no time.

In addition to having a blog, I would also suggest developing a personal website that contains background information and a resume. You should then link between the website and blog. You can find mine here.

This was a post on one of my favourite blogs today – A Shel of my former self.

Can you imagine working for a company that is so short-sighted that it blocks its employees from reading RSS feeds? Do they not realize that RSS feeds + RSS Aggregators = huge time savings? Hear a few reasons I think these companies are shooting themselves in the foot.

David Sifry’s been keeping up with blog growth for quite a while, and he’s become the resident expert on the topic, garnering much attention when he releases his latest ‘state of the blogosphere‘. Here is a summary of his findings:

• Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

With all of these new blogs being started how is it possible for a new entrant to even have their voice heard? Does it still make sense for a small to medium sized enterprise to even start a blog? I believe the answer is yes because search/filter (Technorati) and aggregation services (Newsgator, Bloglines) will continue to improve thus continuing to increase the signal vs noise ratio. Here are a few tips to ensure your voice will be heard.

1. Develop strategy and set goals before you begin blogging.
2. Be persistent. In most cases, you will not see significant results for at least 6 months.
3. Be an active blogger. You must blog at least once a week.
4. Blog with passion and focus. Make sure your topics are focused on the categories that you developed in the strategy phase. To ensure higher search engine placement you should also include the key words you identified in the strategy phase.
5. Network with bloggers that are focused on similar topics. Exchange links and post meaningful comments in their blogs.

If you are new to blogging or not getting the results you would like from your blog, please feel free to contact me.

I have decided that once a week I will highlight a small business blog that does an exemplary job of blogging. This week’s site is the Artsy Asylum run by Susan Reynolds. Susan is clearly passionate about art and weaves some really fun and interesting stories around all topics art. Susan is clearly a seasoned blogger and has done a great job of setting up her blog. The one criticism I have is that she has a lot going on in her side bars, which gives it a cluttered look. Check it out and see what you think.

When I started blogging I just jumped in with both feet. It was great fun but I do have a few scars from mistakes I could have avoided. So before you start shooting from the hip like I did, I’d like to offer the following suggestion to ensure that you get started off on the right foot

Develop your blog strategy before you do anything else.

Launching a corporate blog is a lot like launching a new product or service, without a proper strategy in place it is doubtful that your blog will achieve much success. If your company has an up to date marketing plan then answering the questions below should be relatively easy. If you do not have a current marketing plan, then maybe this will be the impetus needed to develop one. Shadowbox Studios has developed a series of questions that, when answered, help you define the overall strategy and direction for your corporate blog.

A) Developing your blogging goals and objectives

Why is it that you are starting a blog and what are the results you expect to receive? Setting goals and objectives is critical for any business process and blogging is no different. Without realistic goals and objectives, your blog WILL NOT succeed. Please keep in mind that the goal is where we want to be. The objectives are the steps needed to get there. Successful goals and objectives are SMART: Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely.

Sample Goals (not limited to 5)

1. Improve my company’s online visibility.
2. Acquire 10 clients after 6 months of blogging.
3. Position myself as an expert in conversational copywriting.
4. Network with other online copywriters.
5. Produce an example of how a blog can extend a company’s message.

Sample Objectives

1. Identify 5 competitor blogs.
2. Read every new post in the above mentioned competitor blogs.
3. Make at least three comments per week in the above mentioned competitor blogs.
4. Have 10 reciprocal blogroll links with similarly focused blogs.
5. Target ten keywords or phrases (we’ll discuss these on the next post) and get in the top 20 results.
6. Be able to identify key topics by reader comments and trackbacks.
7. Produce at least 3 blog posts per week.
8. Assess the effectiveness of blog effort by analyzing subscriber data (RSS and mailing lists)

B) Identifying your target audience and defining your blog focus

1. What is the vertical market or cross functional specialty on which your blog will be targeted.
2. Who is your intended target audience?
3. What are the topics of your blog going to be?
4. Please list 5-10 key words that are associated with your topic?

C) Identifying and understanding your competitors

The best way to find out you your competitors are that are blogging is to input the keywords that you listed above into a blog search engine. Although I recommend Technorati , there are other very good blog search engines such as Feedster, PubSub.com), IceRocket) and Google’s Blog Search). Technorati has a feature called “authority” that makes it easy to determine who your main competitors are. When you conduct a search on Technorati you can choose whether you would like to see only the results that have authority – Technorati calculates a blog’s authority by how many people link to it. We assume that the bloggers in your industry with the most “authority” are your main competitors. When conducting your search try different combinations of your key words. Try putting two or more key words in quotation marks (“corporate blogging”).

Once you have identified who are the main players in your industry, we strongly suggest that you start following these blogs. Reading what other corporate bloggers are writing can provide you with basic corporate blogging guidelines and spur ideas for future blogging topics. Lastly, another great way to find quality blogs is to check out the “blog rolls” of the competitor sites you have already identified.

1. Please name the URLs of the top 5 competitor blogs.
2. What are the blog categories of these 5 competitors?
3. How long have these blogs been in existence? You can determine this by looking in the archives section of these blogs.
4. On average, how many posts per week do these blogs publish?

Once you have completed this strategy exercise you will be on the right path to successful blogging.

My wife is just finishing her first year of a four year PhD program at a well known university in England. She recently met with the Associate Dean of the business school and was offhandedly asked what I was doing to keep busy. One thing led to another and the associate dean reviewed my resume and asked for me to come in for an informal interview. It all started with her asking me about my background and what I thought I might be able to contribute to the business school. I think I came at her from a different direction than she had expected.

The following is a summary of the thoughts I presented her.

I am passionate about creating cost-effective, competitive and sustainable corporate communications solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises by combining web application expertise with informed communications experience. I believe that most marketing solutions lie in the empowerment of the masses. I rely on agility and collaboration. My solutions and methodology are not for companies with a top down, traditionally conservative, command and control approach to business.

Having said that, the Business School has two fundamental problems that immediately jump out at me. The first is that it is difficult to differentiate a commoditized service and generate any excitement or awareness in the market. The second is that you have not harnessed the power of your alumni network to sell your service to prospective students and employers. With that in mind, the following are simply suggestions that will need to be fleshed out to obtain a workable solution.

Tackling the first issue – I believe that all of your professors should be blogging. Their blogs should be commentary on current news events and how those events relate to the subjects they teach. These blogs should be seen as “Alumini case studies” that encourage discussion from current students, alumni and prospective students. While there are many university professors that blog, there are no universities (to my knowledge) that sponsor and endorse such activities by providing the tools, training and space under their university website umbrella to ensure effective blogging.

Taking this idea a bit further, I also believe that all class lectures and accompanying material (PowerPoint presentations and notes) in the business school should be available to the public. This would be a great service to students saving them the trouble of taping and archiving all of the lectures. It would give your alumni a chance to refresh their knowledge and it would give prospective students an opportunity to hear what real lectures are like at a top ranked B School. If you then provided these people the tools to discuss and collaborate on what was presented, you would find more conversations centred on the University Business School than in any other time in recent memory. And markets are conversations.

Lastly, your alumni network is one of the most potentially valuable assets that the school has, but in order to realize this potential you must empower your alumni network. Give them the tools to effectively network and collaborate online and stay informed. There is some great portal/CMS software out there that has these tools built in. You need to plant the seed and then let your alumni network do the marketing for you.

I understand that these suggestions sound risky to you, but not taking risks often ends up being more risky.

The Associate Dean seemed receptive to my ideas and passed on my contact information to their internal marketing department. I’ll keep you posted.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging is the contacts you make. It starts with you exchanging comments in one another’s blogs and then you begin to exchange emails, connect on LinkedIn and really start to exchange ideas. One such contact I have made is Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah runs a blog about how web tools enable companies to delight customers. Jeremiah knows his technology. More importantly however, he is probably the most passionate, genuine blogger I know. If you’re looking for a great example of how to run a blog, you need look no further than Jeremiah’s blog.