While consumers (worldwide) read blogs…

They don’t trust corporate blogs…..

Although this study was published in December, we felt important to add a few points & hopefully provide a helping hand to our readers/clients/partners as you think about your 2009 blogging/community strategy.

Before, we start, we would recommend you look at some of the interesting blog entries about the subject:
- Josh Bernoff & Groundswell blog entry about it
- Paul Chaney’s (AdAge Power 150 Blogger) blog entry about it
- Debbie Weil – the famous corporate blogging expert
- NetApp: A simple way a company is using this report to reinforce their corporate blogging strategy

Since we have advised a few companies such as Trinchero Family Estates (Sutter Home, Trinchero, etc), Wells Fargo, Pleo, Verizon, National University to name a few, we felt it was important to highlight some of the things that will instill trust again in your corporate blog/community. I am directing this entry to the community manager/corporate blogger/team in charge of the blog or community and we’ll call it “Going back to the foundation of good two way conversations”

• What is the purpose of the blog/community- you should think about what is the personality, the tone and the goal of the blog/community – when people think of Web Strategist from Jeremiah Owyang, they think social media, when people think of Open AMEX blog, they think small business strategy, when they think USStrategy by Ravit Lichtenberg, they think user & customer experiences….you get the point. You need to have a clear value proposition and positioning
• Corporate blogs/community is not a push marketing exercise: We have seen far too many clients, prospects and companies we watch think of blogs/community as another channel to push their information (company news, product announcements, etc.) down the throat of readers. Please resist the urge
• A corporate blog should be an educational tool as well as an engagement tool - My very talented team and I have spent countless hours educating clients since 1998 on the idea that customers, prospects, partners don’t want marketing messages thrown at them. They need for B2C: fun, entertainment, practical produtcs, services for B2B: they need solutions, ideas, ways to deal with their daily/weekly/monthly issues. In “traditional online marketing” for a B2B company, for example, if you initiate a whitepaper campaign, and the whitepaper is entitled “Company A – How we can solve your Salesforce Marketing issues” it will tank. How about “Salesforce & Marketing issues – the top 20 things you will need to manage them” – that will do much better. Same thing for a blog/community- give your readers something they need not what you want them to ‘hear’.
• Listen to conversations your target audiences are having, in your industry, in the industry of your customers, in your partners industries (e.g. use social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Relevant Mind, BuzzLogic, eCairn, Trackur, BoardTracker, etc.)
• Ask customers, partners, other bloggers, pundits, oh yeah the media about the subject you are about to write about – ask them what are their thoughts, the challenges they are facing, and what you might be missing
• Research through “traditional” tools Google search, reader (assuming you have a few RSS), news aggregators, and other sources what points might be missing

THEN write blog entries that:

• Acknowledges all the folks that you have spoken with (link to them)
• Acknowledges other blog entries (linking to them) and then complement with information missing, add salient points and things that have not been written about before
• Provides how-tos, actionable information, questions and thoughts that might encourage a reader to say to themselves “Hmm, I’d like to add my point of view on this point”
• Make it visually appealing – add graphics, charts, etc.
• Establishes thought leadership

THEN what?

• Engage with your audience
  • Send the blog entry to the folks you had interviewed as a courtesy and to grow a stronger bond with them
  • Send an email to a few customers, partners with a personal note from you and let them know that you have written a piece about subject X, Y, Z for which you would love their feedback on
  • Send a twitter asking your followers to come read and ask their opinion on it
  • Post it on your social networks and seek feedback

Although consumers/professionals distrust companies, there are countless case studies of companies that are engaging with customers and well, here are a few that we have gathered:

- Peter Kim’s very comprehensive list of US and International Social Media Case Studies
- Valeria Moltoni – “Network Solutions – Voice of the Customer”
- Paul Dunay – “Lee Jeans – Successfully engaging customers with a cause”
- Our friends at the Social Media Club have a few too
- TechCraver’s Review of Nokia

Want to contribute case studies, thoughts? Please let me know at william at e-storm.com or tweet me