Business Blogs

Forrester Research has released a new report on The ROI Of Blogging, available to anyone with $379 burning a hole in their pocket. For those of us who don't want to spend that kind of cash on a 15 page report, Forrester blogger Charlene Li provides a summary and excerpt. While the value of business blogging is widely accepted, it can be difficult to quantify that value, and Forrester's aim here is to provide businesses with a method for measuring the value of their blogging efforts.

Some potential benefits mentioned in the summary are increased brand visibility, increased sales efficiency, and savings on customer insight. Charlene reveals some interesting details on this last benefit, regarding the value of customer insight in their case study of General Motor's FastLane blog:

FastLane has about 100 people commenting on the blog each month, which is equivalent to gaining customer insight on products and brands from a traditional focus group. We estimated that the value of this was equivalent to running a focus group every month at the cost of $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year. Voila – there’s the value of the blogging benefit laid out in black and white.

Small businesses may not have the budget to run focus groups in order to learn what their customers want, but a simple blog is within the reach of everyone. There's no need to limit yourself to posting news and announcements on your business blog. Instead, consider telling your customers about a new product you're considering and solicit their feedback. Ask visitors to comment about what they think of your new service offering.

The important thing is to actively encourage participation among the customers who visit your blog. If you make it easy for customers to tell you what they want, and what they think of your business, you'll be able to get significant value from your blogging efforts.

I recently wrote about the benefits of maintaining a blog for your business, and how it can help improve communication with your customers. Occasionally, the power to speak directly to your customer base can backfire, reflecting badly on your business and airing your dirty laundry for the world to see.

Blog tool provider Performancing provides us with an example of how business blogging can go horribly wrong. Performancing has been through a tumultuous period of late, having experienced a failed merger, the demise of their blog statistics service, and the departure of CEO Nick Wilson. All of these events were handled with grace and professionalism on their company blog.

But this week, things turned ugly. On Monday, new CEO Chris Garrett surprised Performancing users with the announcement that the company's advertising service, Performancing Partners, was closing down due to financing issues.

I'm sad to tell you that Partners has to close. While I have every faith it could have worked, it wasn't going to happen fast enough. Without more money invested it wasn't going to happen at all.

On Tuesday, former CEO Wilson (who remains a shareholder in Performancing) published a blog post which questioned the closing of Partners.

I don't know what the communication problem between Performancing management is, but there appears to have been some decision making without the benefit of having all the facts.

By Wednesday, a new post appeared on the company blog from Nick Wilson, announcing his return to the helm of Performancing and the departure of Chris Garrett.

Im sad to say that Chris has decided he's better off working on his ongoing projects...I dont know about you guys, but even im a fed up with the constant news and announcements coming out of Performancing recently.

As a result of this very public flip-flopping, rumors abound about the eminent demise of Performancing. Returning CEO Nick Wilson seems determined to turn things around, and his return to the day-to-day management of the company should be a good thing. But his job would be a lot easier without the negative press generated by that unfortunate series of blog posts.

There are certainly many benefits of communicating with your customers via a blog, but it's important to remember that once you publish something, you really can't take it back. That's no reason to be scared away from business blogging, but it's important to use a little common sense before you post any big announcements. Make sure you've got your facts straight, and make sure your announcement won't come as a total surprise to your management and major shareholders.

Blogging can be a valuable tool, but like any tool, you can hurt yourself if you don't use it properly.

When Apple announced their new iPhone yesterday, bloggers and tech sites across the internet rushed heap praise on the long anticipated gadget. The name "iPhone" has been attached to so many internet rumors about Apple's top-secret project that few ever considered who owned the actual trademark. 

The Press Release

Cisco announced in a press release earlier today that they have filed a lawsuit against Apple for trademark infringement. The lawsuit, in itself, isn't terribly interesting; a company infringes on your trademark, you have to protect it. But suing Apple while they're still basking in the afterglow of their triumphant product announcement was bound to leave Cisco looking like the bad guy. And Cisco's press release, while stating the relevant facts well enough, does little to alter the impression that Cisco is just a big, bad corporation looking to rain on Apple's parade.

The Blog Post

But take a look at this blog post from Cisco general counsel Mark Chandler. It's a much more human, almost informal description of the events that led up to the lawsuit, and the reasons behind Cisco's decision to sue. It wouldn't be appropriate for a press release, but Cisco's corporate blog allows them a place to speak a bit more freely about their motivations. And it makes it much easier to sympathize with Cisco's position in the matter. Which statement would you want representing your company?

If you're not blogging, you're missing out

If your business web site doesn't incorporate a blog of some sort, you're missing out on a terrific way of speaking to your customers on a more personal level. You may not be embroiled in a major lawsuit that will be on the front page of tomorrow's business section, but every small business has things they wish they could say to their customers.  With a blog, you have a place to put those things that don't fit in a press release, things that don't warrant a big announcement splashed across your home page, but things that are worth saying nonetheless.

By allowing your customers to leave comments on your blog posts, you create another means for getting direct feedback and even engaging in conversations with people who might never have taken the time to make a phone call.

Any small business that wants to improve on communication with their customers should seriously consider testing the waters of blogging.  Cisco is just one example a a large corporation that's using blogs effectively, but most small businesses, especially outside of the tech industry, haven't caught on yet. But they will in time. The only question is, are you going to be the first small business in your market to get a blog, or the last?