Part One
As I have mentioned here a few times, I believe that collaborative weblogs are an excellent choice for a corporate blog. Multiple voices means no one person has to post everyday; it is much easier to manage the workload, and there is the vibrancy of conversation among the posts as well as in the comments.
I am an even bigger proponent of collaborative weblogs that speak the voice of the customer, not just the company. For the past two months, I have been working on a collaborative weblog to be written by a company’s customers as well as company reps. We are now in what you might call a public beta – the blog is live and there are posts, but we won’t be officially launching until early May.
But, we are slowly getting the word out, so it seemed the time was ripe to tell my Roadmaps readers all about it.
The client is Software Secure, a software company that develops security software for computer-based and online testing. In a nutshell, its products prevent students from cheating on exams. The weblog is called Multiple Choice and it will be written by our customers and other educational experts. We have three clients signed up to blog and are continuing to recruit regular contributors. If you know any educators or educational technology experts who might be interested in blogging with us, please let me know (sgetgood@getgood.com) They do not have to be a Software Secure client. We want articulate people who are actively engaged in the issues. It is a volunteer position. We want folks who want to help their peers.
I am very excited about the potential of creating spaces for customers to speak directly with each other as well as with the company about topics that are at the intersection of their mutual interests. Resources such as this perform a valuable service for the community while also serving the company’s interests. It is “doing good by doing good,” and what could be better than that?
I welcome feedback from Roadmaps readers about the Multiple Choice blog, but I would ask that you leave feedback about the blog as a marketing tool, here on Marketing Roadmaps or in private e-mail to me at sgetgood@getgood.com
If you do stop by Multiple Choice, of course feel free to leave comments on any of the posts, but I would appreciate it if my Roadmaps readers would respect that this is a client project. Comments about secure online testing, education, learning technology, Software Secure, are all fair game for Multiple Choice, a blog about secure online testing and learning. Marketing feedback belongs here on the Roadmap. Thanks!
Next: I will post some of the background thinking that went into the decision to do a blog.
TonyD says
This is very cool. I’ll be curious to see how it works out. If it works well, it’ll be a great way to leverage customer passion to make better products. Cheers!
Have you looked at Wiki at all as a collaborative information environment? Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) has been a great success as an online encyclopedia. SeedWiki does free hosting of Wikis (http://www.seedwiki.com/).