WHAT STRATEGY SHOULD YOU PICK?

We discovered from the survey and case studies that in general having a lot of blogs at a company does not necessarily mean that a company is getting the most value out of their blogging efforts. There are definitely some SEO benefits from having a lot of blogs. It's our hypothesis that discussing both company and customer thought leadership is the best way to build community.

According to bloggers at Microsoft and Macromedia both companies are crossing a cultural divide, from a closed system in product development to one of openness and transparency. Our Macromedia blogger stated the company has already crossed that cultural chasm. Both Microsoft and Macromedia are getting tremendous benefits in marketing product development and marketing promotion. Literally, individual Macromedia customers believe Macromedia built and developed the product from their suggestion.

If you helped build a product as a customer you are much more likely to buy the product and tell your peers about the product. Here lies the online PR opportunity for corporate bloggers. The best ways to market a product are through customer referrals and good PR. Building a community of bloggers and online customers will increase the likelihood of online PR being generated on your audience's blogs as they will be discussing their ideas about your products. That online conversation about your company's products produces direct traffic and links back to a company blog and site, resulting in higher search engine rankings and more traffic.

Following Macromedia and Microsoft's examples and considering the survey overall, we recommend that companies when developing a blogging content strategy should encourage their product builders to blog and that they write about their products. Any thought leadership presented on the blog, should focus on the development of a company's product, and new ideas should come from both the blogger and from customers.