More customer blogs

Let’s start with the Vespa blogs. Reported in many places including Steve Rubel’s blog (CooperKatz is doing the blogs and PR for Vespa).

I am looking forward to these blogs, as I believe the customer evangelist blog has real potential as a marketing tool for certain types of companies:

• Companies in markets where a strong sense of community develops offline and online;
• Products or issues that elicit passion;
• Topics and issues that are at the intersection of company and customer interests. No one wants to read a blog, written by customers or not, that JUST talks about the product;
• If corporate-sponsored (versus a customer evangelist doing it on his own — more on that later), a sponsor that is willing to let the blog happen. The good and the bad.

As I wrote last week, I have been building this type of blog for a client for the past two months, and I am really pleased to see others embracing this model.

Others places I read about the Vespa blogs: blogspotting (with an amusing jab at the Technorati 100), BlogBusiness Summit, NevOn (who reminds us that blogs are part of an overall marketing/communications strategy, not an end in themselves), the Social Customer Manifesto.

Another company doing a unique company-sponsored blog is Nokia. It owns TheFeature, but takes a hands-off approach. As described in the About section on the site:

"TheFeature aims to be nothing less than a voice – an opinionated, independent voice for the mobility community. It is the mobile Internet industry’s premiere thinking space – designed to help you manage the flow of information in a sector where the flood of data is increasing as fast as its growth, scattered throughout multiple channels, frequently obtuse in nature, and devoid of context…."

"Although TheFeature is owned by Nokia, the Espoo, Finland-based manufacturer of technologies for mobile communications, the opinions expressed herein are solely those of its writers and content providers, and are not official statements by Nokia or any of its business partners or affiliates. The TheFeature staff and its content partners are committed to editorial independence and to the openness of its forums."

Thanks to blogthenticity for pointing me to this site.

The other type of customer evangelist blog is the customer who is so passionate that he or she creates a blog about the product. This blog is not sponsored by the company. Halley Suitt, in a post on the Tom Peters blog and an article in Worthwhile magazine, calls these corporate fan blogs and highlights some of the issues companies have to face when they have passionate fans who blog.

Issues notwithstanding, I believe that companies that are willing to either give voice to the community through a company sponsored site, like Vespa, Nokia and my client Software Secure, or can strike the proper balance with independent fan blogs, will reap tremendous benefits by engaging with their customers in this online conversation.