Category: Corporate Blogging

Bud Gibson has an impressive post that sums up the results of the blogging bootcamp at the Michigan Business School. Lots of good stuff in Bud’s post including some fine points on PageRanks and search engine optimization. Bud’s post opens with the following:

From May 10 through June 23, 2005, we ran the first High Octane Blogging Bootcamp for 33 MBAs at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.  Our client for the bootcamp, Coach’s, served the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan market for disaster cleaning and restoration services.  Recent surveys indicate that over seventy percent of consumers search the web when shopping locally for services such as Coach’s.  We wanted the bootcamp to demonstrate how Web 2.0
technologies like weblogs and RSS could help better establish a
company’s search presence to take advantage of this channel. To really
push the idea, we informally set a goal that bootcamp participants’
team weblogs outperform Coach’s site on searches for its own keywords.

Great alignment of consumer purchase process with effect of blogging on search engine optimization. Bud wraps up with a key implication of blogging (in the small business segment):

The bootcamp results demonstrate that with moderate but systematic
effort bloggers can achieve search visibility that outperforms
established local players for relevant searches.

Bud also gives some other plugs for blogging as an alternative to websites and traditional paid search:

• Consumers tend to click on “natural” results like those produced by blogging eight times more often than they click on paid search results.
• Easily updated blogs allow companies to adapt to changing market conditions.
• Blogs allow opportunities for customer service and interaction that do not exist with static web sites.

Although I can’t say I’m an expert on the numerics associated with the first bullet point, I wonder whether this type of stuff is the sign of a fall of Web 1.0 Advertising Industrial Complex (re-adapting a phrase coined by Seth Godin). The mix of blogging, rise of blog readership, RSS ads, sponsored bloggers, sponsored posts, measurement tools, and auction markets are changing the landscape.

Robert Scoble, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of blogging, needs a break from the crazy back-and-forth on his blog (see the comments section for R-rated dialogue). His partner on the blogging book (Shel Israel) weighs in too on both attacks happening to Robert and attacks at the book blog, "Naked Conversations". Very understandable policy by Shel.

No fun. Unproductive. This is a good example of where I don’t want to the have the RSS feed to the comments section of a blog. It’s also an example similar to handling a heckler during a speech or when giving a presentation. The difference, however, is what do you do when it happens in your own "house" (to coin Shel’s words)? Maybe Robert needs to go to allowing trackbacks only … not ideal … but then the heckling can only occur outside his house …

Update (8/4/05): Fred Wilson and Jeff Jarvis on the subject.

My newsreader seems to be clogged up this morning about blogs and Dell (e.g., how one blog has affected Dell). Perhaps no use writing about anything else. Check these out:

• BusinessWeek Blogspotting
  
• James Governor
• Hugh
• Seth Godin
• Rick Segal

Maybe for a little history on the subject, go to:

• Blog Business Summit

And maybe a little unfair (and totally unresearched), but Dell opened lower this morning:

• Dell stock opens lower Aug. 1, 2005

And if one searches for "Dell Blog" on Google, one gets here.

Added (8/2/05): Shel Israel (new post)
Added (8/2/05): Robert Scoble (older post for more background)
Added (8/2/05): Steve Rubel (older post for more background)
Added (8/2/05): PC World (older article for more background)

Update (8/23/05): Dell responds. Jarvis comments. Fred Wilson targets Amazon next?

To go along with the theme highlighted in my prior post about the risks of professional blogging, Dan Drezner has an interesting post on the subject for academics, particularly related to graduate students (PhD track) and non-tenured faculty. Note: Dan is a somewhat rare case of a non-tenured professor that blogs …

There are a number of people that ask me whether there are risks to blogging. My general answer is related to getting "dooced" and making light of the subject because this is usually a new term for people that are just learning about blogging.

I usually cast blogging in a entrepreneurial light … that there is a potential upside to blogging and that the risks can be reasonably calculated … that the opportunity can be seized …

But for the academic world, this world is a quite different. At the majority of schools, the process (from my vantage point as an outsider) is akin to the mysteries of pledging a fraternity or sorority. Additionally, the total academic community is very small. For example, worldwide in marketing there may be 200 rookie professors vying for 75-some positions in business schools each year.

For the academic community, net-net I cannot say that I recommend blogging. For people in this community (graduate students and non-tenured faculty), if one blogs, I would generally say that the mission should be very intentional, direct, and non-entrepreneurial. Wish I could say otherwise, as my wife is part of this community (assistant professor of marketing in a business school – and I am not saying anything about her school – I am only making general statements about the academic environment).

I cannot even recommend anonymous blogging as a way to protect one’s interests. The community is just too small. People figure things out.

In the academic world, one should probably treat blogging from the frame of a trustee’s mindset (as opposed to an entrepreneur’s mindset). That is, the risks and the potential of loss should be weighed first (as opposed to opportunity).

If you haven’t visited David Biesel’s blog, "Genuine VC", here’s links to three, very nice posts that can get you started:

1. "Stop! You Shouldn’t Blog. The Risks of Professional Blogging" – David does a good job to point out some frequently overlooked, disconfirming evidence against professional blogging. My $0.02. Everything has risks. The VCs that criticize blogging in this regarding are experts in mitigating risks. The risks to mitigate for blogging are way easier to mitigate. And people who draw blanket conclusions about blogging in this way are just being too hasty on the whole deal.
2. Social Networks: The Network or the Service? – Methinks the higher one gets up on the value chain towards service, the better. As for the metamodel David refers to for social networking, I could potentially see this for Web 3.0, but it may be tougher for Web 2.0 timeframes.
3. An Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Information Asymmetry in Bootstrapping – There is some interesting dialogue in this post. All I can say is that if one is an outsider to a venture (e.g., looking to join one as a non-founder), one should try to take as many steps/measures to reduce that information asymmetry. Due diligence on people, personalities, process, chemistry, org structure, philosophies, legal agreements, etc. Can never do enough, and the process is always ongoing.

Update (7/13/05): David has some updates here on item #2.

The Wall Street Journal has an online article today on blogging positions in corporations. Saw the names of at least two people I know in the blogosphere and in the real world (not mutually exclusive BTW): Paul Brown and Heather Hamilton.

Cheryl Gidley, managing partner of Gidley Consulting, former GE Capital Exec, and a Northwestern MBA, says that while blogs are hot now, they are going to get old. She provokes thought and makes some excellent points in an ePrairie article. In particular, she writes:

Segment marketing is both the medium and the message. Blogs are simply place
in the latest deliverable format. The reason this isn’t news is that
there will always be evolutions in place. Right now, post cards with
fabulous color and great copy are still hot.

They’re going to get old.
Everything does. Sending text messages is hot – that is, until schools
outlaw the use of cell phones because kids are cheating. It’s hard to
reach that age group when all the messages are stored up and they’re
blasting through them to clear their message cues.

What’s hot and what’s not is
pure and simple. It’s segmented marketing. Understanding any segment –
whether it’s generational, ethnic, cultural or educational – means
understanding what makes its members tick and what makes them buy
whatever it is you’re peddling.

The thing I resonate most with is her comment that "blogs are simply the place in the latest deliverable format". I agree here.

Where I think such a characterization can be a little misleading though is that I think such an argument reduces any communication and Internet technology down a bit too much to the point that people just don’t want to understand things at all. The telephone system has been around for quite awhile. R&D related to the telephone system networks have extended the life of underlying technologies, created the seeds for wireless phone technologies, and we are now seeing disruptive forces like VoIP having an impact on people’s lives. Accounting systems get old too. Should we not install those? Perhaps not with the cost of S-O, right [joke]?

I guess my point is that the blogging hype will likely get deflated over time and come back to reality, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore or even pass on learning about blogs and using them. Heck, the investment is not that big, right? And even if the total invested $$ in blogging is small, there’s more people (VCs, subscribers, software R&D) longing the market with real money and actual dollars than shorting the market. True in Bubble 1.0 too I suppose … perhaps I need to go to Warren Buffet to get a hedge instrument for this market  …