Marketing Roadmaps

Blogging

IBM Blog initiative

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SiliconValleyWatcher reports that IBM will be launching a massive blog initiative next week. Lots of folks are commenting on this initial report, and it will certainly be interesting to chart the progress of blogging at IBM.

Hopefully, a lot of doubting thomases (and thomasinas) will recognize that IBM’s corporate adoption of the form is validation of the blog as a powerful marketing and brand awareness tool.

16 MAY UPDATE: Cnet news.com story on the announcement today, with links to the actual guidelines and policy.

Marketing Roadmaps Round Up

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From Joho: comment on a fictional blog from Audi. Since Cluetrain is the “bible” for many of the most vocal opponents of character blogs, and any blog form that isn’t by “real people,” I’m pleased that one of the authors seems to have an open mind on the subject. I do disagree with his terminology (faux blog); faux means false, and false or fake for me requires intent to deceive. I would call this blog a fictional blog, as it tells a fictional story using the blog form. And as Dave points out, good or bad is determined by the target audience; it is all relative.

Quick Link: Dave Taylor at the Intuitive Life Business Blog tells us about Your Daily Art, a unique small business blog.

Where the Roadmap is taking me

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Just a few places where the Roadmap is taking me.

Next week, I will be at  Camp WorldWIT: Women in the Lead from May 19-22, speaking on a marketing panel, "First to Market: Make Your Name Hit and Stick," Friday, May 20 from 2 – 3:15pm.

Bhc_going1

In late July, I will be at the blogher conference in Santa Clara. I am very excited to be a panelist on the Blogging for Business panel (Saturday July 30 at 2:30pm)

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.

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).