Archive for the ‘Blogging And Your Business’ Category

Goodbye 2008, hello 2009.

Made many resolutions for your business this New Year? Perhaps you’re reflecting on 2008, and wondering what opportunities 2009 will bring. Perhaps you’re taking a look around the current market and worrying how the credit crunch may eat into your business revenues this coming year. Perhaps you’re starting to wonder how you are going to distinguish yourself from your competition.

Whatever resolutions are set, most business owners are probably worrying about how they avoid the fate of Woolworths, and other UK retailers. My tip for 2009 is simple: avoid mediocre as if your business depends on it (it does).

In my view, the problem with Woolies was that no-one ever left their house thinking ‘I must pop into Woolworths for ______‘ - they lost their way and potential customers couldn’t see any value for themselves - in other words, it turned into a mediocre business.

I’m not normally one for predictions (setting myself for a fall ain’t normally my bag), but I do firmly believe that 2009 will see an increase in mediocre businesses struggling. Not solely due to a looming global recession, but also because customers are going to be much better at sniffing out remarkable businesses that they’d rather do business with. They don’t have to settle.

In the dark days before the Internet (I think everything was in black-and-white, and I’m not sure there was any electricity!), Customers had no option but to shop on their local high street. Businesses like Woolworths were positioned for this and they won. Now people don’t have to brave all weathers and venture outside to interact with a business - the Internet means you don’t get to win by simply taking part.

Do yourself a favour at the start of 2009: aim for remarkable. A great place to start would be with Guy Kawasaki and his fantastic Art of the Start speech - 40 minutes well spent if you intend to make 2009 a remarkable year:

For Graham and I, we’re hearing from a lot more people eager to talk about how they can start leveraging the Internet to overhaul a mediocre business - a realisation that has no doubt been aided in this economic climate. We’re really excited and looking forward to helping all our clients achieve that in 2009.

However you decide to beat mediocrity in ‘09, we wish you and your business every success.

Growth in blog readership has been widely reported over the years (the latest suggests that blog readership has grown by 300% since 2004), but a recent survey also shows how influential blogs can be when consumers are looking to make buying decisions.

The BuzzLogic sponsored study - Harnessing the Power of Blogs - found that what blog readers consumed on-line strongly influenced purchasing decisions, and played a key role in taking them to the point of actual purchase. The survey looked at over 2,000 consumers in the US, and highlighted some interesting trends:

Blogs influence purchases. One half (50%) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.

Blogs influence it’s readership in various stages of the buying process. A blogs role as a buying guide breaks down with readers as:

• Decide on a product or service: 21%
• Refine choices: 19%
• Get support and answers: 19%
• Discover products and services: 17%
• Assure: 14%
• Inspire a purchase: 13%
• Execute a purchase: 7%

Ads on blogs can spur various activities:

• 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say so.
• Top activities include the following: read product reviews online (17%); sought out more info on a product or service (16%); visited a manufacturer or retailer website (16%).

The ability to use the Internet as a research tool to aide your buying decisions is no big surprise - how many times have you been influenced by readers reviews on Amazon.co.uk? I bet at some point, you were either assured or turned-off of purchasing an item based on what you read. I know I have. We tend to seek out the opinions of others - to learn of their experiences.

The fact that blogs have been credited with the capability to influence purchases probably reflects how blogs make sharing product reviews and buying experiences so easy. The participation aspect of blogs also means others can add to the conversation about their particular experiences, offering a balanced view and increasing the depth of information available from a single site.

You can read BuzzLogic’s summary of the report over on their blog.

A survey report published this week by UK-based online publisher E-consultancy - Online Customer Engagement Survey 2009 - shows that around half (51%) of organisations have placed a greater focus on engaging with their customers online, reacting to the current economic climate. The surprising thing is that this number is so low - in a tight marketplace, I would have thought that a majority of businesses would be looking at how they can reach customers more effectively.

The report was commissioned by digital agency cScape, and is available from their website for free for a limited time. Some highlights from the report:

“Areas associated with Web 2.0 and social media such as user ratings & feedback (41%), user-generated content (37%), blogging (36%) and brand presence on social networks (36%) are also expected to attract significant sums of investment.”

“More companies are viewing tactics such as blogging, user reviews and on-site video in the context of a broader customer engagement strategy and pulling only those levers which are most appropriate for their business model and customers.”

“Despite the relative novelty of micro-blogging utilities such as Twitter, it is interesting to note that 7% of companies say they have improved their customer engagement through this channel.”

With the current state of the economy, and fears of a recession looming, finding new ways to reach your audience on-line should feature in any business planning for the coming year. The Web is a fantastic tool to cultivate communication with customers. How are you planning to rise above your competition in 2009?

Seth Godin has a sore thumb.

He has also just lost KitchenAid a sale. Given the popularity of his blog, KitchenAid may have just lost a lot of sales, actually.

Here’s my reason. My wife Laura and I bought a chalet-apartment in the Alps. Over the summer we took out a cheap kettle we had bought. It took so long to bring the water to the boil that I used to set it going before I walked to the local bakery for bread and croissants etc. If I stopped for a clumsy exchange in French with the bakery staff, the water was past tepid by the time I returned. It also failed to sing, squeal, whistle or any other of the comforting noises you want and expect from a kettle.

In other words, we got what we paid for.

So, this coming Christmas holiday trip to France, we plan on buying a better quality kettle that will make noises and heat the water quickly. The KitchenAid kettle was one of the options.

No more.

Do I feel I need Seth Godin to tell me what kettle to buy? No. Do I think Seth Godin is a leading expert on kitchen appliances? No.

But when Seth Godin tells a story about customer service, I listen. It isn’t because Seth said his kettle melted that I won’t be buying a KitchenAid kettle. Hey, Seth may be careless with how he positions the kettle on the gas, for all I know. No, the issue is that if my kettle were to melt - or go wrong in some equally basic way - I don’t want the customer service experience he had.

I like the look of the Le Creuset kettle in my local kitchen shop.

I always enjoy reading about small businesses, especially in the UK, who improve their business and enhance their customer relations by embracing the Web. So I was pleased to read recently about a small UK company who have not only transformed their business by using social media to connect to their customers, but have been rewarded for their efforts by a Dell initiative to award small business excellence.

Wiggly Wigglers is a small, Herefordshire based company, operating out of some farm buildings, who are passionate about the gardening products they supply. They have successfully built, and are maintaining, an on-line strategy that includes regular blogging, weekly podcasting, and an active Facebook group.

By adopting social media, and placing it at the core of their marketing strategy, Wiggly Wigglers have reported that their business:

• Serves 90,000 customers worldwide and delivers its products across Europe;
• Cut its advertising budget by 80 percent when the company turned to social media over traditional advertising;
• Built its catalogue based on Wiki ideas generated on its Facebook page by experts and customers.

Congratulations to the team at Wiggly Wigglers, a brave decision to embrace the Web and communicate openly and honestly with their customers is clearly paying massive benefits (not to mention £25,000 worth of Dell products and services!).

Idil Cakim posted back in April on the Next Fifty Years blog, about how Wiggly Wigglers are doing social media the right way - Wiggly Wigglers: Gardening through Social Media - and summarises their on-line activity with a glowing reference, and a great checklist for others looking at marketing on-line:

There is a dotted line between being Heather’s podcast listener, blog reader and Wiggly Groupie on Facebook and becoming her customer. Heather is doing several things right from a social media marketing standpoint:

- She has a strong voice. It’s genuine and personable.
- She is passionate about what she writes.
- She informs and educates her customers.
- She offers applicable tips.
- She keeps in touch.
- She encourages product trials with discounts and give-aways.
- Her products have a social angle—they make the world greener.
- She welcomes new friends.

Wiggly Wigglers should be an essential case study, worth, er, studying, for any business looking at enhancing their web presence through social media. If you are considering implementing a social media strategy, making sure you can happily (and honestly) place a tick next to at least 6 of the above tips, will prove a solid foundation for your efforts.

I know I know, I’ve talked a lot lately about using LinkedIn - in part, because I’m really beginning to feel a shift there from a contact-list kinda-place to more of a networking tool, or a shop window for businesses and smart people (OK, maybe not exclusively smart people - I’m on LinkedIn, after all). This follows the announcement of LinkedIn applications last week.

So please bear with me while I indulge myself with another (great) list about how to get the most from LinkedIn, this time by Brian Wallace of Mashable - How to get the most out of LinkedIn.

Brian lists seven LinkedIn features that most businesses could benefit from using:

Quick Lookup - Look up who you are having that next business meeting with. You’ll be able to break the ice right away.

Q&A - Post questions to others in your industry. The Yahoo Answers look and feel of this feature has definitely made LinkedIn more active and interesting. A public question can be responded to by anyone that works in really any discipline. Such was the case where Derek Edmond spotted a discussion occurring about the trustworthiness of SEO.

Recommendations - Have clients or co-workers post recommendations, which future employers and clients can view to gauge your skill and level of trustworthiness. Conversely, if you’re an employer, these imply trustworthiness for a potential freelancer or new hire.

Background checks - Look up potential new hires or freelancers. This should be right up there in an HR manager’s toolbelt.

See what your competition is up to - Keep track of what others in your industry are up to. Network updates gives you a feed of recent activity, so you can see who your connections have friended, groups they have joined, and the people they have recommended. You’ll even be able to see when people are switching jobs.

Introductions - Use people you already know to help make introductions. It’s a great way to get in the door with a company you need to contact.

Open Networking - Go out and become a LION! You are an open networker.

Brian also links to a great post by Jennifer Laycock on Search Engine Guide about why LinkedIn is the one social network she would always recommend - the post gives some compelling, real world examples of the power of using LinkedIn. A great read for those who are unsure whether to bother investing their time and energy into the LinkedIn network.

So, there you have it. Even more reasons why LinkedIn could be good for you, and your business. And yes, I promise not to go on about LinkedIn for a while…

A debate was started recently on the BBC, asking ‘Is Blogging Dead?‘ - perhaps a rhetorical question, as it was posted to one of the BBC’s blogs - and with 55 comments so far, it seems the answer is no. Further evidence of this was announced yesterday by comScore, who reported on UK traffic to blogs during August 2008. Their press release read:

comScore… a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study of blog visitation in the U.K. examining the top blog platforms and individual blogs as ranked by total U.K. visitors. In August, 14.5 million people in the U.K. visited at least one blog, representing 41 percent of the total U.K. Internet audience.

“Blogs have become part of the essential fabric of the Internet today,” said Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director, comScore Europe. “They live and breathe in real-time, helping quench media consumers’ thirst for the most up-to-date breaking news, information, and analysis. It should not, therefore, be particularly surprising that they’re increasingly displacing traditional media usage and carving out an ever-increasing slice of the online advertising pie.”

14.5 million people - 41%. These are large numbers, and act as a compelling argument that Blogging is healthy and well, and living in the UK.

Although an argument could be made about how long each visitor stayed, or how many pages they viewed, it is hard to ignore that Blogging is establishing itself as a credible mainstream media platform.

How is your business helping to quench the thirst of an ever-increasing number of blog visitors in the UK?

The New York Times published an interesting article last week - Obama still dominates in Web 2.0 world, Internet searches. The article compares some key statistics about the attention that both candidates are garnering over the web. It shows Obama is well ahead when it comes to Facebook connections (2,000,000 v 564,000), YouTube views (84,000,000 v 22,000,000), recent mentions in the blogosphere (10,291 v 3,924) and others. It shows Obama is quite clearly ahead when it comes to engaging with, and possibly gaining the attention of, his target web audience.

Obama and his team have leveraged a host of social tools to reach it’s audience, including: a Facebook page, MySpace page, Youtube channel, Twittering, Flickr, an iPhone application, a blog, and more.

Reaching your target audience is clearly important in a presidential campaign, and part of Obama’s target audience is obviously a demographic who engage in social media, so reaching out to them in their natural surroundings sounds like a good idea.

It’s interesting to see the importance that the election team is placing on engaging with people on the web - a web that is changing the way people communicate - and are using a variety of tools, networks, and communication platforms to reach out. It’s also interesting to see that they are obviously backing that importance with a reasonable resource - both in time and money -  investing in social and web tools to promote the cause.

What a great marketing effort.

It will be fascinating to see if any traffic analytics appear after the election, and if Obama wins, whether these new sources of engagement are attributed to his success. I wonder how much more we are going to see these types of tools and networks being used for a variety of promoting communication - if it’s good enough for presidential elections campaigns, then surely all tyes of organisations and campaigns will continue to rely more and more heavily on reaching out using the web.

You can read the New York Times article in full by clicking here.

The FT ran a piece in its Digital Business supplement (and on-line) yesterday on Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell. It’s well worth a read - although it’s not the best written article to appear in the FT - because of the unequivocal conclusion: blogging works.

As the article points out, Dell’s reputation was in the doldrums. As a large number of its customers were on-line and these same customers - and soon to be ex-customers - were vocal in their criticisms of Dell, Again, on-line.

Dell responded to charges that they were poor at listening by creating a sort of ‘chief blogger’ role and launching the Direct2Dell blog. It seems fair to say that the effect was positive in a surprisingly short space of time. Of course, the fact that the blog started at all was seen by the blogosphere as a bonus point. But the key thing is that Menchaca keeps it open and honest. As he says,

“We wouldn’t have any credibility at all if we only used the blog to publish marketing messages.”

The blog is a place that customers, ex-customers, and potential customers can air opinions, see what others are saying, and hear what’s happening at Dell, It also present a human side of Dell and makes the company seem approachable and willing to listen and to change.

In less than two years, Dell has turned its on-line reputation around. There may still be customer service issues from time to time or serious hardware faults but the blog can take a lot of the sting out of those potential PR disasters by acknowledging them and engaging with them before the gripe spreads across the internet.

And now for something completely different…
In another example of blogs driving interaction, Dennis Howlett’s guest post on Chris Brogan’s blog yesterday kicked off a debate about the terms ‘Web 2.0′ and ’social media’. The post itself was a blast of iconoclastic dyspepsia from Dennis. This was followed by a quick retort from Tim O’Reilly and then the comments started flying.

I won’t recreate the debate here - read the comments on the post for a great insight into some of the problems associated with taking these tools mainstream - but what the comments revealed was the power of an open forum for trying to define something and reach a consensus. This is what drives change.

The beauty of it is, that before you start, you don’t know who might have an opinion and who might be able to add something useful. In the enterprise space, this would be like inviting everyone in the company to every meeting just in case they had something valuable to contribute. Ideal but not practical.

(A quick aside: this happened on a smaller scale when I worked in Asia for Reuters. When I regularly visited Tokyo to present project plans and specifications for new systems, instead of the just the two or three decision makers, I would be confronted by a whole department of perhaps twenty staff filling the meeting room. The vast majority remained silent throughout the meetings.)

Opening up the debate might seem scary. You may hear things you don’t want to or which reveal things you would rather stay hidden. But, as Menchaca says in the FT piece, being open leads to credibility. I also think it improves the business culture of the company being open: it encourages a change of mind-set. Better still, of course, it lets you tap the knowledge and experience of the vast number of people your company will never normally encounter in the day-to-day running of your business.

Social Media has evolved, according to Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb. And we agree. Sarah reports how the social media trend is moving from place to ‘hang-out’ to a platform for communication and information sharing (how very web 2.0) in shopping and social media. Sarah writes about some interesting surveys recently released that begin to illustrate this trend.

Generation Y are those (fortunate souls, some might say) born after 1979, and for whom the Internet is an integral part of their social, and daily, lives. This hip, web-savvy group are obviously a growing target market for a vast majority of business, and those that are taking aim at them are beginning to get to grips with building a presence on social networks:

• 39.3% of retailers use social media for marketing
• 32% have a Facebook page
• 27% have a presence on MySpace
• 26% post to YouTube

Sarah also points out that another 2008 study shows that nearly three quarters of people (potential customers, some might say) are using the Internet to share experiences of dealing with businesses and brands. Tools including Blogs, RSS, Micro-Blogging, YouTube, Forums and social networking sites are all being cited as resources for sharing experiences. I would bet that a very large percentage of these same people are also influenced by what others are saying on-line - word-of-mouth 2.0, perhaps.

Now, these surveys are based on US Internet users - so should UK businesses ignore this emerging platform? We hope they don’t. Since the birth of the Web, we have seen many trends emerge and evolve, and in most the US seem to be a little ahead of the curve compared to us in the UK. I’m certain we’ll soon be talking about how many UK businesses are embracing, and benefiting, from all forms of social media.

Check out Sarah Perez’s post in full here, and draw your own conclusions. It could change the game your business plays for the better.