Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Setting expectations

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A post by Elisa Camahort over at the Worker Bees Blog: Is your blog your office? Or a quantifiable marketing tool? reminded me of some conversations I had a few weeks ago (and have blogged here more than once) about the role of the blog in the marketing plan. Should you do a blog for brand awareness? Or lead generation? Or crisis communications? Or …..??

Elisa makes some excellent points in her post, not the least of which is:

"And as business people it is incumbent upon us to think about our expectations before we implement something."

That for me is the key. Blogs can serve many purposes in a business, internally and externally. But, as with any tool we choose to use in our business, we must be certain to set the proper expectations AND develop/use the tool properly to meet those expectations.

A weblog created to generate leads should be very different than one designed for brand awareness. Sure, your brand awareness blog will likely generate some leads for your business, but if you have high expectations of lots of inquiries resulting from your blog, you had better be posting content and information that drives your prospect to respond.

Just like with any other marketing tool. If you forget the call to action, whether it is a direct mail piece or a weblog entry, the phone is not likely to ring.

the mongol rally blog

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As I periodically do, last night I checked Technorati to see if any new blogs had started linking to me. And discovered that the mongol rally blog-2005 has included me in their blogroll.

I’m pretty flattered, as it is a fairly small blogroll, so I guess it means they really like my blog. And I am also pleased to have found them, as they are about to embark on a pretty cool adventure — 8000 miles across Mongolia in a 2CV in a rally that will raise money to feed the poor in Africa.

So thank you Julia and Damian for reading my blog, and good luck in the rally. I look forward to following your progress.

The “What is” Meme

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Far be it from me to ignore a meme:

What is…

Susan Getgood is a results oriented strategic marketer.
Susan Getgood is Director of Corporate Communications at The Learning Company.
Susan Getgood is a good read about blogs and marketing.
Susan Getgood is one of corporate America’s leading experts on education and Internet safety.
Susan Getgood is one of America’s leading experts on education.
Susan Getgood is one of corporate America’s leading experts on education and Internet safety.

Originally seen on View from the Isle.

Roadmaps Round-up, May 4th

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My semi-regular list of interesting marketing posts from around the blogosphere.

From BL Ochman: Technorati Founder David Sifry Outlines a Basic Corporate Blogging Policy  One of the things she discusses in her post is that bloggers who blog for the company need to have media training. I agree, and I think companies should offer something to employees who blog personally as well, even if it isn’t full-fledged media training. Many a blogger has been stunned by the fact that their statements caused a fuss for one reason or another. Media training prepares people for the 15-minutes of fame, and a better-informed employee might save the company some embarassment down the line.

From BLOGthenticity, Bloggers and the Law, an InfoWorld article

From Dave Taylor (The Intuitive Life Business Blog), Top Business Blogging Resources

A great series from Jim Logan: Inside Baseball on Business Blogging. There are four posts (with a 5th promised), read ’em all: Blogs are a tool of business; Not every business needs a blog; Blogging platforms; Blogging styles; Best Practices (coming soon).

More customer blogs

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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.