Blogging 101

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About me: I am the team lead responsible for fostering a community around IBM Data Management solutions, such as DB2, Informix, IMS, U2, and InfoSphere solutions. In other words, how we can use social media to communicate with and interact with the people who care about IBM Data Management products. Prior to this role, I served for over 8 years in a variety of marketing and strategy roles with the Lotus business unit, and spent the past 4 years as the offering manager of Lotus Sametime. I have been blogging at www.adamgartenberg for over 2 years now, and have been involved as a reader in various online communities going back before that. This session is intended to be an introduction to blogging, and will talk about why I blog and what I get from it, and provide a perspective on the benefits of blogging to you and the company you work for or the community you contribute to, and some things to think about when getting started. I do plan to have a followup Blogging 201 session that will start to go into detail on actually choosing a blogging platform and getting started.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyknit/417661856/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djmccrady/2221024093/

Background image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alfakilocharlie/2102221353/

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Blogging can be very rewarding, both personally and for the business. It offers a way to share information and news about our products, to establish thought leadership for the company and for yourself, to build a connection with the community, and to serve as a means to solicit feedback from those community members. It puts a human face on the business, it shows that we care what our customers and practitioners think, and it gives us a chance to explain our story in a lot more detail and with more timeliness than can often be done on a relatively static product website or through a press release.

Source: "Driving Word of Mouth Advocacy Among Business Executives: The Experiential Marketing Connection,” conducted by the Keller Fay Group and sponsored by Jack Morton Worldwide. http://www.jackmorton.com/commonPages/ondemand/default.aspx?intID=9&wp=true&ac=us In the Communications 1.0 model, we controlled the message and the medium. But the old model no longer holds up. Other statistics: More than 75% users trust “word of mouth” recommendations over other advertising - Nielsen Company, April 2007 A word of mouth dialogue is 1,000 times more powerful than a standard ad impression - The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II

Why blogging is important to you Establish personal brand Establish credibility Expand your personal network Improve your communication skills Helps you do your job better: Share news and detailed information Clear up misconceptions in the market Understand the needs of our customers and constituents Refine key messages and selling points Helps us sell more products

Why blogging is important to your company It allows you to share information that may be… … not worthy of a press release … hard to find on corporate website … more detailed than we would post on corp. website … shared more timely than on corp. website It allows you to tell a story, not just the news It puts a human face on your company It allows your constituents to provide you with feedback It fosters discussions It can serve as a “social object” that others can link to and pass along. It helps you place better in search results It allows you to link to other community sites It is proof that there is an active, vibrant community around your company or products

Site visits and subscriptions to www.adamgartenberg.com from July 2006 through June 2008. Google, blog aggregators (like www.planetdb2.com), and word of mouth will make sure that quality content is found, no matter who says it.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/2331754875/ How often do I need to post? I would recommend posting at least once a week. While more is usually better, posting less frequently is not always a problem. As long as you’re establishing and maintaining the connection to your readers, a specific schedule isn’t as important. Personally, I find that my posts come in spurts. I may go a week between posting, and then publish 5 posts over the course of 2 days. How long do posts have to be? Not long at all - the post length should fit the content. Sometimes it will be 2 sentences, sometimes 2 paragraphs, and sometimes (OK, rarely) 2 pages. How long does it take to create a post? It probably takes anywhere from 1 - 2 hours, depending on the topic, how long the post, how much you need to look around for links. If you're just commenting on an interesting article or pointing out a new video, it may take 10 min to create a post. If you're working on a thought piece about the business, it could take even longer than 2 hours.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/visbeek/2350698672/ OK – I’ve got a little secret. Blogging’s not really for everyone. But if you’ve made it this far, it probably is for you.

What should you write about? Product announcements Product feature previews A press release we just issued An analyst report that ranks us highly An analyst report that ranks us low Your thoughts on an interesting article about database compression you just read Dropping your kids off at summer camp The customer visit you’re flying back from A debate the product team is having on whether to include feature A or feature B The 100,000 download milestone you just reached on your product trial The planning for the upcoming conference … …

Social Computing Guidelines: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html Business Conduct Guidelines: http://www.ibm.com/investor/governance/business-conduct-guidelines.wss What should you not write about? Anything that can only be shared under NDA Revenue or sales figures other than what is officially reported by your company Disclosing customer information if they have not agreed to be a reference Making commitments about product futures Anything that goes against your company’s social computing guidelines or business conduct guidelines Anything that you would not want to see reprinted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

"A pro-Wal-Mart blog called Wal-Marting Across America, ostensibly launched by a pair of average Americans chronicling their cross-country travels in an RV and lodging in Wal-Mart parking lots, has been reduced to a farewell entry. The blog, launched Sept. 27, was profiled in this week's issue of BusinessWeek , which exposed the site as a promotional tactic engineered by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart's public relations firm Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip's original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV's side. Although the blog featured a link to WFWM, it did not identify the organization as a paid sponsor. “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons My recommendation would be to do an individual blog as the default option Lets people get to know you as a person and broaden posts beyond purely being about work or your focus area You will be more likely to keep up with it if you’re the only one writing You can always have “guest authors” If you want to test the waters, set up an internal blog on blogcentral; you can always copy content over to an external blog down the road (it’ll still be new to everyone else!) If you don’t think you can devote time to running a personal blog, or you have a group of people that all want to blog but can’t each make a full commitment to blogging, you can do a team blog Beware the “Tragedy of the Commons;” it still really helps to have a lead person that’s planning on “owning” the blog

Criteria to consider: How much of a personalized look and feel do you want? Do you want to create a personal brand? Or is that not as important? How much time do you want to devote to setting up and maintaining the blog?

Also see Merlin Mann on What Makes for a Good Blog: http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/19/good-blogs

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Blogging 101 - Presentation Transcript

Blogging 101 Adam Gartenberg www.adamgartenberg.com Dec 4, 2008 All cartoons © Hugh Macloud – www.gapingvoid.com – unless otherwise noted
About me
About you
- Why I blog
- Why blogging is important to you (and your company)
- What kind of commitment is involved
- What should you write (and not write) about?
- Other considerations
- Advice and next steps
About this presentation
In the beginning…
There was a website. And the website was good.
And the marketers came, and filled the website with data sheets and demos, whitepapers and presentations.
And the people came, and they read the website.
And ignored it.
Instead, the people sought out other sources of wisdom
And they listened to the crowd
Which brings us to…
Why I blog
- Share my thoughts
- Contribute to community
- Help me succeed at my job
Remember the moral of the story: People listen to the community, not the company % of work-related purchases influenced by… Source: "Driving Word of Mouth Advocacy Among Business Executives: The Experiential Marketing Connection,” conducted by the Keller Fay Group and sponsored by Jack Morton Worldwide. 53% 32% 26%
Why blogging is important to you
Why blogging is important to your company
But is anyone really going to read my blog?
What kind of commitment is involved?
- How often do I need to post?
- How long do posts have to be?
- How long does it take to create a post?
A brief interlude…
What should you write about?
What should you not write about? http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/12/how-to-use-web.html
- SUGGESTED READING
- IBM's Social Computing Guidelines
- IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines
Above all else: Be Authentic. Be Authentic. Be Authentic. Blogging is a double-edged sword; if not written with an authentic voice or if only focused on one-way content (e.g., "check out our latest product and attend our upcoming conference, but no, I’m not interested in your feedback"), those benefits can be lost.
Other decisions: Team blog vs. individual blog Beware the “tragedy of the commons”
Where should you host your blog? Attend Blogging 201 for more on setting up your blog Less setup/maint. More setup/maint. Standardized Personalized
Advice and Next Steps
- Decide if blogging is right for you.
- Ask me (or another blogger) for help (and attend the monthly Blogging 201 and Blogging 301 sessions)
- Read other blogs (if you’re not doing so already)
- If you’re not ready to blog externally, try blogging on a company intranet
- Remember where we started…
- Fri, 12/12: Blogging 201
- Layout and design
- Widgets
- How to measure traffic
- How to build traffic
- Make the most of RSS Feeds
- Search engine optimization
- … and more
Thank You Adam Gartenberg www.adamgartenberg.com twitter.com/agberg
Example blogs
- Ed Brill – Sales BUE for Lotus Notes
- http://www.edbrill.com (Notes/Domino)
- Center of community – will often get 60-100 comments on a single post
- Almost takes on moderated discussion forum feel
- Mary Beth Raven – Design lead for Lotus Notes
- http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth
- Collaboratively designed Lotus Notes 8 with the community by asking for feedback on design and potential features
- Chris Eaton – DB2 Product Manager
- http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/database/technology
- One of the most widely-read blogs on IT Toolbox
- Mix and Mash blog
- http://www.mix-and-mash.com
- Team blog for enterprise mashups
- “ Turbo” Todd Watson
- http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/Turbo
- Good mix of personal and work topics (focused on social networking)
- Sam Lawrence – Chief Marketing Officer, Jive Software
- http://gobigalways.com/ (WordPress)
- Lots of thought leadership pieces, first person thoughts, and interesting blog design
Another view on the role of word of mouth in influencing work-related purchases