WHOSE IDEA IS IT ANYWAY?

Thought leadership matters in blogging. Many business blogging survey respondents ranked thought leadership as an important factor in starting their blog and as one of the results they have received from writing their blog. In researching case studies for the survey, case study interviewees reported they gained the best results when they used their blogs most effectively for suggestions and feedback on their products, as the interviewees stated they received lots of product ideas from their customers in return. Therefore we can distinguish between different peoples' thought leadership, and that it is not necessarily the blogger's thought leadership that is important to a company blog. Here's why: a company must attempt to satisfy the needs and wants of its customers, and customers are typically the people who actually know most about a product or service. As often it is the customer who uses a product more than even a product's developer or manufacturer. Customers think a lot about the products they use and come up with new ideas for improvement. If a company can harness their customers' knowledge and ideas on how to improve their products, they will find better ways to satisfy their customers needs and wants.

Based on the results of the case studies, we would suggest that it's the customer's thought leadership that is more important than the company blogger's ideas. As customers post new ideas on a blog, a blogger can collect them and become a thought leader through their customer's ideas. To become a successful thought leader we would suggest based on the case study examples that a blogger should listen to their customer's ideas, needs, and wants. Harnessing the power of a community of customer bloggers can help a company to create better product ideas, and test them in the forum of customer opinion quickly.

In essence blogs are learning tools, specifically a company can use a blog to learn how to improve or develop new products by communicating more effectively with their customers through the use of corporate blogs. Any company should encourage customer ideas, reward them and learn from their customer' s example. If they do they will build more successful products, which also have ready customers who want to adopt new ideas and products because those same customers have participated in the process of product development. Such a strategy will also have additional Internet marketing benefits in the form of more backlinks and higher search engine rankings, as well as direct traffic from links on many different websites.