Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

http://www.marketingprofs.com/3/payne2.asp
Idea: Let Your Customers Read Blogs Written By Your Salespeople

An article with pluses, potentials and concerns about letting your sales staff author blogs for your company.  I especially liked the following illustration:

“A recent Harvard Business Review article recounted how the CEO of a midsize corporation stood up at a big company meeting to introduce a new product they’d developed, only to find that most of the audience already knew about it.

Why?

Because they’d been reading the blog of one of the company’s junior associates—who chronicled the progress of the development. Not surprisingly, HBR heralded this as a wakeup call to corporate marketing folks. “

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Justin Hitt on October 14, 2003

   Michael, this article sent me into a rampage writing session in notepad listing all the horrible reasons the original article was plain silly.

   I’m glad I wasn’t the only one taken aside by this article.  You’re right to point out the obvious problem with uncontrolled blogging in a corporate environment.

   Imagine that CEO was announcing a new product at a conference (which may contain competitors) only to find out everyone knows all the intimate details already.  It’s not so bad that they knew them before the CEO did, but that the CEO is presented as they have no idea what their own people are doing.

   This “blogging by sales people” leaves a company open to liability and implied warranty issues that are usually caught in more formal corporate communications like newsletters and marketing materials.

   Of course, I might be reading too much into your comments—I’m probably still upset with the absurd notion of sales people blogging instead of selling.

   I’d be interested in reading your comments on the original article’s, for or against, idea of sales staff blogging.  Meanwhile, I’m taking a break to cool off…

   Stirred up,

   Justin Hitt
   Consultant, Author & Speaker
   http://iunctura.com/

2. Michael Boyink (Author) on October 14, 2003

   Hi Justin -

   Yeah, you’re reading too much into my comments..;)  I thought the article was thought-provoking, so I linked to it. 

   But, since you raise the point, why can’t blogging be selling?  Blogging and sales are both about building relationships, no?  (BTW - along those lines, how do you come by my site?)

   Or, what about client/project-specific blogs, where sales staff, customer support, engineering, and clients can all come together to collaborate, post documents, make decisions, etc?  It could be passworded for access, then search-engine indexed/ archived for posterity.  I’m experimenting along these lines on a current project.

   From a consumer point if view, I’d look more favorably on a compay that runs a blog by the sales staff - or anyone -  in the company - because I appreciate the more personal voice of a blog than the typical, sanitized, lawyer-ized, jargonized, marketing - speak of corporate web sites.

   Of course, with any technology, it’s going to make more or less sense based on the company, its products, its audiences, selling channels, and culture.  Blogs are no more a one-size-fits-all than anything else.

   And yes, appropriate guidlines would have to be established. 

   But the rebelious side in me thinks that for some companies a little uncontrolled blogging would be a good thing…;)

3. Justin Hitt on October 14, 2003

   Great points, however, it is important to remember weblogs are only one communications mediums available to sell customers on purchasing a product.

   The problem with no-hold-barred or everyone-blog mentality is it’s hard to measure the value for the amount of customers reached.  A better way to use blogs for selling is to address common sales objections or concerns—encourage an interactive conversation about the topic, but reuse the topic in other mediums.

   Now I really like your idea of client/project specific blogs.  Perhaps add managers and you have a great communications tool to document project progress, lessons learned, and objectives to address.

   Of course, we’re back to the issue that blogging is just another publication tool—an inexpensive tool that could supplement or even replace current web-based project management systems.

   One thing is for certain, blogging does make it easy for customer to comment and sales to work directly with their specific concerns.  Plus, a less jargon laden copy is always welcome.

   Sincerely,

   Justin Hitt
   Consultant, Author & Speaker
   http://iunctura.com/

   Ps. I don’t remember how I found your site, but I’ve got you in my news aggregator. You cover some of the aspects business websites that I’m interested.

4. Michael Boyink (Author) on October 14, 2003

   “The problem with no-hold-barred or everyone-blog mentality is it’s hard to measure the value for the amount of customers reached.”

   True.  But the same statement can be made for every non e-Commerce marketing site out there.  Moreso the more entities involved in a final sale.

   “A better way to use blogs for selling is to address common sales objections or concerns—encourage an interactive conversation about the topic, but reuse the topic in other mediums.”

   I may be saying the same thing with different words, but maybe the best audience for a sales person’s blog isn’t the customer.  Maybe it’s other sales staff.  Maybe salespeople blogs are a way to get around the challenges of highly mobile, highly independent employees not collaborating for the good of the company.

   ‘Course, my cynical side is telling me that for non-technology related companies, most of this conversation is moot.  Based on past experiences with technology and salespeople, blogs will need to achieve a much higher penetration in other areas of the business world before Sales folks will take them up.

   Now if you could work in a speech to text translator, and they could post by phone…;)

5. Halifax Lawyer on February 08, 2004

   I am new to the internet and I am surfing here and this is very interesting reading. I did a search in the search engines on “company blog” and I found your web blog.
   I am a Lawyer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and thus my interest in searching for a company blog on the WWW.
   I just wanted to see how the rest of the world thinks and see what trends and technology are happening in the world. I also was interested in a blog for myself which might possibly lead to a blob for my law firm, you never know, that is if I can understand the technology of operating a blog. The different things discussed on a website found by searching for “company blog” in the search engine is very amusing reading to this Halifax Lawyer.

   Respectfully yours
   B. J. Stephens, LL.B. 
   A Halifax Lawyer

6. Michael Boyink (Author) on February 08, 2004

   Hi BJ -

   One of the attractive things about blogs is that they whittle down the need to “understand the technology” to a bare minium.  For example - to post to my site I click a saved bookmark to a control panel, then “new entry”, enter a title and body.  Once done - I click “update” and the blog software does the rest - date and time stamping the entry, creating comments pages, and rolling off previous content into site archives.

   For an simple way to get into blogging, You might want to investigate hosted services like http://www.typepad.com, or http://www.blogger.com

   For a look how popular a lawyer blog can be, check out Ernie the Attorney:
   http://radio.weblogs.com/0104634/

   Ernie has gotten quite popular via his blog.

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