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July 21, 2006Taking A Leave Of Absence From Blogsurvey To Write A Book About Corporate Blogging
I am happy to announce that I will be working on a book about corporate blogging over the next few months. Butterworth - Heineman Business Books or Elsevier and I just signed a contract to write a book about business blogs called "strategies and tools for corporate blogging."
My thanks to Jane Macdonald, the acquisitions editor for Butterworth-Heinemann for all of the work she put into creating the relationship and getting us to this point.
As part of the effort to finish the book I am taking a leave of absence from my role as Director of Blogging Strategies at Backbone Media, Inc. in Waltham. I will not be updating the blogsurvey blog for a while, but you will still find me writing the occasional post on my personal blog PR Communications.
Posted by johncass at 11:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 12, 2006Starting To Blog
Starting off slowly will not hurt your corporate blogging adventure. That's one of the lessons I think I've learned, as I've been blogging over the last three years. In talking with other corporate bloggers, clients and running my own blogs at a few different companies. It seems to me that a company does not have to be in a rush to develop multiple blogs for their company. Starting off slowly and experimenting with one strategy is perfectly acceptable. And as various corporate bloggers have learned from Macromedia/Adobe, Microsoft and the Southwest Airlines blog, dipping in your toe and growing organically is probably the best way to learn about blogging and interact with your audience. Each company is unique, even if their industry may not be, therefore its always a matter of culture and personalities as to how fast a company can progress with the number of blogs and how open their blog will be to their audience.
Posted by johncass at 10:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 11, 2006Dell Launches Blog
Dell Launches a new blog called "Direct Conversations with Dell" at one2one.com.
The blog hosts a number of authors, who write posts and post videos. Similar to Microsoft's channel9 website.
I immediately clicked on the about one2one link to read the blog's guidelines. Makes interesting reading. The dell blog set's the expectation that Dell employees will answer blog comments. That's a huge commitment and one that General Motor's Fastlane blog has not made to its readers, see my earlier post about setting expectations with blog readers.
Here's the commitment to conversation:
"one2one is an extension of Dell's direct model where we learn and improve by listening to customers. Comments are a great way for us to know what's on the minds of our customers and partners. Of course, we may not always agree with the comments, but we will listen closely to see what we can learn and improve. Comments will be moderated - we will do our best to post your comments and respond, where appropriate, within 24 hours."
It will be interesting to see how Dell's employees response to reader comments. I've already seen examples of the Dell bloggers responding to customer comments. Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager, responded to a blog readers comment.
Posted by johncass at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blogsurvey Having Trouble
Due to a server switch we are having some trouble with blogsurvey today. Should have this fixed shortly.
John
Posted by johncass at 10:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2006Northeastern Blogging Success Study Progress
Work continues on the Northeastern University blogging success study. We have transcribed all of the interviews, and I am now taking out excerpts to use in the final study document.
Posted by johncass at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 5, 2006Bloglines Engineer Comments Great Example Of CGM Brand Management
Matthew Hurst on datamining wrote about his search for a new RSS feed reader, he is thinking of ditching his existing service, bloglines.
Bloglines UI Engineer, Ben Lowery, spotted Matthew's blog post, and concerns about the bloglines service and responded quickly.
I was impressed with Ben's comment and that fact that bloglines keeps tabs on its brand keywords. This comment is a great example to every company about how to do effective product management in the world of customer generated media. Monitor your brand keywords and respond to questions and comments about your product as they appear on the web.
Posted by johncass at 5:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
