Escape from Corporate Colditz

A very good friend of mine said to me tonight that they had been missing my posts and I replied I had been lacking the inspiration needed to write them.

I continued – “you know it’s hard to keep writing about things, I don’t want to write a load of crap about nothing, so much of what I read is trivial and appears to be written because the author thinks they must write something to keep their audience satisfied or perhaps they just need to write about everything to satisfy themselves”

The problem is that I find writing a good post quite exhausting and certainly time consuming – unless I get a sudden flash of inspiration.

Last year when I started my blog I had a real drive – a desire to get noticed and an enthusiasm from discovering this new medium but most importantly I had time – plenty of time whilst trying to start up my own marketing consultancy business.

Today I am wrapped up launching Sharedband, discovering a new market place and learning so much about the difference between a start up environment and my prior corporate Colditz life – and loving every moment of my new found freedom – I haven’t had time to reflect on what’s happened in the last 6 months.

Maybe I need to pick out the best bits and post about the changes in my life and the differences which in hindsight are huge.

Blogging in the Flesh

Last Wednesday I decided to join Neville Hobson and Debbie Weil at the Hereford Arms in London for their proposed blogger get together. An interesting group assembled and I got to meet Mark White who has commented on a previous post of mine and some other interesting guys: Tom Shelly from the Economist, Alex Manchester from Melcrum, Martyn Davies and Matt O’Neill.

Neville challenged us all to come up with some comments for a podcast – he’s now published on his blog and we had a wide ranging discussion from politics to the value of face to face meetings. Like the previous Saturday when I got together a bunch of people to meet face to face I found the evening great fun and very rewarding. It is interesting to note how much faster the conversation gets going when despite meeting for the first time face to face, there is common understanding and in some way a prior relationship, where one has been reading their blogs and may have been involved in an online conversation.

Although I didn’t join in the conversation that evening about the Edelman / Walmart controversy, I listened with interest to the passionate views and have been reading some of the many posts around about this subject. Although I understand the anger and disappointment exhibited by some commentators I am amazed at the level of coverage this debate is getting. Nothing and no one is perfect, and I am sure everyone is still on a steep learning curve when it comes to social media, mistakes and misjudgements will probably be made by everyone at some point.

We also discussed the lack of understanding of social media inside corporations today, the challenge is there for the blogosphere – let’s keep our passion and energy focussed on that.

Corporate Comment Control

JB3 raises a very interesting issue in his comment on my earlier post about Strategic Marketing:

“It can do all those great things, but the problem as I see it is, if companies control the content of a blog. What if someone is posting legitimate problems or outcomes with a product or service? Should the company be allowed to erase that from their blog?”

Clearly the blog owner is responsible for the content on their blog and there is no issue in my mind that moderating out profanity and unnecessary bad attitude is totally acceptable. Shel Israel calls it his “living room comment policy”.

For me there is also an issue when it comes to subject matter, if I am discussing a topic- because this is what I know about i.e. marketing, and someone joins my conversation and starts discussing something I know nothing about (i.e. football) or where it seems totally irrelevant to my topic - I'd say it was reasonable to at least question the relevance with the commenter before publishing. Fortunately I haven't had to do this - nor do I really expect to have to do this on my personal blog.

However in a large corporation it is reasonable to expect that an engineering department in Europe would know nothing about customer service in North America. (Not even considering the fact that many multinationals have various siloed product divisions under one brand). I don't think it’s appropriate for commenters to expect to be published if they try to address their North American service issues in a European technology discussion.

Nevertheless if I was a corporate blogger and I received off topic comments I'd certainly be forwarding those remarks off line to those capable of responding. The important thing here is for corporate blogs to be clear of their mandate, their scope of conversation and their ability to respond. It comes back to setting expectations for your readership. However as a corporate blogger you need to build trust with your readers, it would be unwise to moderate comments on matters you are clearly involved with, your responsiveness and openness are vital to maintain credibility.

It is also interesting to note that it is only about 1 in 500 readers on my blog that actually make a comment – (and I hear that is on the high side) - so a good question is: how appropriate is it for a vocal minority to potentially shift the conversation off the blog or post topic.

I’d revert back to Shel’s analogy of the living room, however justified the person may feel in making their comment isn’t it a question of manners and how a participant goes about building a relationship. Those that are not interested in a relationship and just want to rant or get sensational should not be made welcome. How different are these approaches for the example I created with a corporate technology blog focussed on Europe -

"When are you guys going to fix my problem, you just can't get your act together and I am fed up beating my head against a brick wall here in North America"

"Excuse me do you know how I can get help with my service issue in North America, I can't find any other blog or individual to talk too on this subject?"

Shel, Rick Hugh et al

As per Shel’s post we had a great evening last Saturday when seven of my colleagues who have all been talking about the impact of social media on our lives and businesses met up with a few gurus on the subject.

Here is a picture of the dinner courtesy of Shel, and I’m sure there will be other pictures to follow.

Nick and Andrew my friends from Stonk media grabbed the initiative and interviewed Rick Segal, Shel Israel and Hugh MacLeod on the subject of corporate blogging, it’s a really good five minute insight. Download on thir post here

I have been asked a few times since the get together – what was the big take out for me. You know it’s very difficult to nail this with a good answer. I was delighted to see so much great conversation occurring and relationships being formed – who knows where any of them will bring value - but my expectation is that some will.

Maybe Bob will sell Shel an authorised signed reprint of a famous Pink Floyd album cover (yes Shel's last great rock music passion) – or perhaps Hugh and his business partner Jason Korman may have tempted a few more to try out Stormhoek wine – I doubt any of us can afford one of his suits. Also met with Henk Kleynhams from Skyrove and really interesting hotspot business concept, check out his movie.

Blogger Hell

Sorry it seems that all day I haven't been able to republish my blog. I don't think this is unsual for Blogger, although its ususally only been a problem before for a couple of hours, today its been impossible for at least 12 hours!

I wanted to republish as several comments are not showing up on the posts, so if you've added a comment and it hasn't showed up yet - its not because I've moderated it out!

I doubt I'll get this post to publish now (1st timed at 1.05 am 5th Oct) - but who knows with Blogger it's a real B*gger!

PS no need to comment on changing tools - I'm working on it now....

4^th attempt to publish – this time from email

tried again at 7am 5th attempt and now again at 10.40pm on the 5th Oct 6th try.........

Firefox to Internet Explorer and Back Again

A few weeks ago now I switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox and have been very happy with the experience. In particular I like the active bookmarks and tab views.

Then on my last blog post I saw a problem with the formatting of the bullet points – some html code was showing up on some peoples PC’s. However I and some of my other friends couldn’t see the issue at all. The reason was that I had created my post whilst using Firefox and those people seeing the errors were using IE. Of course this isn’t a new issue but it was new to me and the thought of having to check all my posts for compatibility before publishing certainly didn’t fill me with delight.

Checking around I found a blog talking about this: Firefox Review and a recommended neat little plug in to Firefox that allows you to easily switch the viewed page to IE and back again at the press of a button, so now I can continue to enjoy the benefits of Firefox and ensure that everyone gets the picture.

Blogging Interviews

I could do with some help; I have started working with a couple of companies who have asked me to look at their opportunity if they started blogging. Part of this process is a number of interviews with selected staff, to establish views and understand the business I have come up with 16 questions – however they may not be the best 16. What have I missed? I can tell you 16 is plenty – any more is not a good idea – in fact 12 would probably be better, but I can’t pick any to drop at this point.

SECTION A : Your company as it stands

1. What is your company role and responsibility?

2. What do you think about company’s products and services, i.e. quality and success?

3. How closely does your company work with its customers, alliances and partners?

4. How well do the customers or other partners know you?

5. How would you describe your company culture?

a) Openness, transparency?

b) Responsiveness?

c) Ability to deal with criticism or bad news?

6. How well does marketing and PR today support the business? And how would you describe your brand’s value?

7. Who or what are your key (they-below) and what do you think about them?

a) Competitors?

b) Journalists?

c) Analysts?

d) Events/exhibitions or seminars?

8. Is confidentiality a key issue for your business?

a) Intellectual property?

b) Customer details and trade secrets?

SECTION B: Your views on the blogging opportunity for your company

1. What style should the company blog be?

a) From corporate to personal?

b) From branded to non-branded?

c) From chatty to reserved?

d) Other comments

2. What will you post articles about?

a) Any allied subjects?

3. How long do you think you can spend blogging / day / week?

a) How many posts do you think that will be?

4. What ratio of time will be spent reading to writing?

5. What support do you need from the company?

i.e. tools , training, helpline, rules, back up etc.

6. How do you rate your own level of commitment to the proposal?

7. What do you see as the main benefit to the company?

8. Should I blog about the project?

Shooting the Breeze with David Tebbutt

I recently had a coffee with David Tebbutt. I’m a great believer in the power of face to face meetings, despite the benefits of social media it really can never be a substitute, however it did facilitate this meeting.

David is an extremely experienced writer, journalist, trainer, mentor, blogger and all round very interesting guy. When I shook his hand I had no idea what would come next and I’m still unsure of the full potential, all I know is I really enjoyed the couple of hours and I learned a lot too.

Now David has made some great comments and observations about me in his latest post - thanks. It’s amazing that throughout my time in the IT market our paths hadn’t crossed before, we share many friends and contacts. It’s probably because as he says he’s been ensconced in the media and PR world – whilst I have forged a path through major corporate marketing roles. I am sure we’ll hook up regularly to shoot the breeze and who knows if there might be some business opportunities too.

David has also recommended a couple of interesting articles for further reading on social media and how it’s affecting corporate marketing and PR:

Neville Hobson who produces a regular podcast “the Hobson & Holtz Report” and also just posted an article on developing a social media communications strategy.

Also Paul Gillan who is writing an interesting book on line “The New Influencers”.

Blogging is Strategic Marketing

Generally marketing is measured in terms of return on investment and for most people this means if they spend X dollars on marketing activities and they get Y incremental profit dollars, then Y/X = ROI. This approach usually results in marketing budgets being discretionary and when times get tough the budget gets cut, pretty early on in the cycle of trimming the P&L to meet forecasted quarterly results (usually because its impossible to prove Y – or its true incrementality).

However the intangible assets of a business make up a huge proportion of the market valuation of a business. This balance sheet goodwill is driven in part by activities that affect customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty. It also takes account of brand value, competitive conditions, market share, dynamics and awareness. These factors collectively are often referred to as strategic marketing.

The nature of blogging is to build genuine customer relationships, if taken to the core of a business strategy it can build substantial trust with customers. That in turn will create customer evangelists driving not only improvements in customer satisfaction and loyalty statistics but generate a long term brand advantage in the market. Blogging has to be strategic.

Blogging Consultant

Now Hugh has given away my secret, you all know why I started blogging!

But don't forget the blogging is just the tool - its all about interactive customer communications. That's why trackbacks are good - and Blogger doesn't support them so I have to fiddle around with Haloscan to make it work.

Taking the plunge

Shel Israel talks to David Parmet on why he took the plunge and dropped traditional communications and PR in favour of social media. There are some real insights from someone who has lived through the transition and some good advice for those considering the future.

Incredible thanks to you

I am really delighted to see the way my readership is developing, In fact I'd go as far to say as I am stunned at the trend, after just 18 posts. Only one link in to my blog so far but nevertheless entering: Keith Collins Marketing, into a Google search gets me the top two returns out of 1.8 million, 6 weeks ago I was nowhere to be found!

Answers to David’s (oops sorry Dennis) questions on Blogging

Following David’s sorry I mean Dennis Howlett's questions in his comment on my post Italian Bistro Engine I have a rather lengthy response:

It’s important to first say that I am assuming the questions are from a corporate perspective rather than their customers view point or my own interest.

Why is there a need? There is always a need to communicate with customers, getting across your proposition, or answering their questions, or providing a service etc. The challenge is doing this as effectively as possible, and that’s not just a matter of cost, there may be quality or image considerations. Customers today are spoilt for choice and information is abundant on the web, if a business isn’t fully engaged with its customers it may loose out to its competitors.

What have you identified as requiring change? Traditional marketing communications are almost always a one way affair. Some organizations have done well to segment their propositions to different types of customers but that doesn’t go far enough. Customers want individual interaction with their chosen vendors, they want to understand more than the glossy pre-packed messages, and above all they are looking for a relationship. Perhaps in the past this relationship was the preserve of the corporate account manager, now customers of all shapes and sizes want to get closer.

Who is ready for any of this? The answer to this today is not everyone, however there are market challengers and companies that see that this fits their open culture and can easily benefit from this type of initiative. It may also present a good opportunity for market differentiation. If it becomes pervasive in a particular market it may leave the remaining companies no alternative but to participate.

Why should they believe you? My own experience as a corporate marketing director gives me insight into traditional marketing challenges. I have been fortunate to have had the time to investigate the opportunities, something I never really had time for when in a full time corporate job.

Why does it have to be external marketing? It doesn’t – this works equally well for a limited community like a management team or the whole workforce, in fact I can’t think of a better method for a CEO to explain his vision or strategy. The only question is what’s so secret that you don’t want customers to share in it too? I’m sure large companies already leak this sort of information to customers. So make sure all the stakeholders benefit.

What are the risks? There are risks that people may publish things in error, but a well organized employee blogging strategy should set down the rules and train staff as necessary, just like you would train staff to talk to customers (sales folk) or the media. It may be a different set of conditions but it boils down to how much do you trust a specific employee to represent the company. Salesmen do it for a living everyday – admittedly on a 1:1 or small group basis but nonetheless they are responsible for their actions. The other risk is starting and not meeting customer expectations on an ongoing basis – there has to be a real commitment, and time factors have to be accounted for in the analysis – so that the effort can be justified and properly resourced.

Who is going to manage the change and do they have the qualities necessary to steer this kind of thing through? I would suggest this responsibility rests with the head of marketing in a company, they are best placed to organize and implement this strategy, but they will need total buy in from the executive team, especially the CEO. They will have to be ready for the open culture it will demand and that may mean changes in policies, processes and some people!

Show me the money!!!! It’s very difficult to measure how a brand or company is perceived; the final measure should be in improved business performance. By having a customer centric business your customers act as sales representatives – driving new business and improving loyalty. (Reducing the demand for expensive acquisition programs). Customers can also provide valuable feedback for future product development that drives the circle of satisfaction. In the strategy is successful it should build substantial goodwill and thereby the overall asset value of the business.

I recognize this is not an easy change process, but I really do believe we are on the cusp of a very significant revolution in customer communications.

Good luck with the conference. Let me know what you think afterwards.

Naked Conversations

A good friend of mine gave me this book a few weeks ago with the strong advice; “this book was written for you Keith, you’d better read it…”

In the subsequent days I have started this Blog and found a real purpose that goes far beyond a job. The book isn’t just about blogging; it goes to the heart of building customer relationships through interactive communications.

I say to everyone who is interested in blogging for business they should read it, but anyone who wants to understand how their customers’ expectations are changing should read it as well.

I am really grateful to David for his recommendation and Robert Scoble and Shel Israel for writing a great book.

Italian Bistro Engine

Picture the scene in a charming Italian bistro with plenty of great wine and tasty food.

There are 7 highly experienced marketers and agency owners (5 with silver hair and 2 far too young & trendy) trying to figure out what this revolution in customer communications will mean for their businesses.

I, one of the silver variety, had invited a select few together to figure out if we could / should work together to develop a joint proposition for business blogging and podcasting solutions.

After the best part of 5 hours and several bottles we decided that it would have been great to make a podcast out of our machinations as there was great entertainment value in some of the trains of thought (maybe next time!).

We did all agree on a few things:

(1) It’s not about the technology its all about a sea change in customer expectations, choice and empowerment – which has been enabled by these new technologies like RSS, blogs and podcasts etc.

(2) Most businesses haven’t started doing anything yet and there’s a real need to help companies develop and implement a new interactive communications strategy – but we need to get our skates on as the time for it is now. Although no where near mainstream yet, there is little doubt that the adoption levels have already crossed the chasm and are accelerating rapidly. Key market influencers are likely to be early adopters.

(3) Not all companies are ready to start these conversations – an open culture and/or a real business need are crucial to make a business act. They are likely to be market challengers or smaller / medium sized organisations with every thing to gain and nothing to loose.

(4) Company marketing teams and budgets are generally stretched with existing activities, our proposition should be complete, from education and analysis through to implementation. The costs are low relative to traditional marketing programs - its all down to the corporate commitment to really put the customer at the heart of the business.

(5) Organisations will need help and solutions in a number of areas:
- Assessing their opportunities and risks
- Developing the strategy – clarifying their needs and culture
- Deploying and integrating the tools into existing systems and processes
- Creating quality AV material – it’s all in the editing (especially for video podcasts)
- Training many more staff on how to communicate well:
- How to create good content - remarkable stories, passionate views etc.
- Are there any rules or taboo subjects
- How to remain open and honest yet not put your foot in it.

(6) There’s virtually no risk in giving it our best shot and we will all learn fast by diving in head first! Hopefully we might get recognised as being at the cutting edge of this revolution.