The rules for reaching your buyers through online communications have changed dramatically. Most marketers know and use several ways to tell their story on the web: email marketing and newsletters, through the media (hoping that online reporters write good things) or via a company’s marketing communications website. While these tools are important, now we have another important alternative: the Corporate Weblog (blog).

Blogs are one of the few forms of marketing that, done well, are considered authentic thought leadership by the market. Rather than the egocentric product information that appears on most technology company websites, blogs provide valuable information about a market or topic for people in all stages of the sales cycle. However, for marketers raised on the notion of journalism as a craft demanding a fair and balanced view of a topic, the leap to blogging can seem daunting. In journalism school, aspiring reporters and editors are taught that stories are developed through research and interviews with knowledgeable sources. And for years, public relations and marketing professionals have worked exclusively through journalists to get their stories told. But the online conversation has shifted to allow anyone with a keyboard, an interesting point of view, and the guts to start a blog the possibility of equal voice.

Forward thinking technology companies are creating blogs to directly reach buyers. In a report called The State of Blogging released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, blogs are used by millions of people and the growth rate is extraordinary. Two Pew surveys conducted in early 2005 show that

16% of U.S. adults (32 million) are blog readers (a 58% increase from 2004). Perhaps the most interesting part of the Pew study is that 6% of the U.S. adult population has created a blog (that is 11 million people or one out of every 17 Americans). And according to Technorati™, a popular blog search engine, in its State of the Blogosphere report issued in mid-2005, a new blog is created every second.

Blogging basics:  What you need to know to get started

Technology marketing professionals often struggle with what to blog about. The first thing to consider is “who do I want to reach?” For many people, the answer is a combination of buyers, existing customers and influencers such as analysts and the media. For a blog to be valuable to this kind of audience, the content needs to focus on an issue in the marketplace and not just on your company and its products. Think about a definable area where your company has expertise. For example, if your company sells CRM software, you might do a blog on sales force effectiveness. What can you say aboutyour market that identifies you as an undisputed thought leader?

Most first-time bloggers try to cover too much. It is better to start with a narrow subject and leave room to expand. Be authentic. People read blogs because they want to find an honest voice speaking passionately about a subject. You do not have to be harsh or controversial if that is not your style. If you are interesting and provide valuable information, your readership will grow. Before you begin, think carefully about the name of your blog and the tagline, which will be indexed by the search engines.

Some organizations have created formal guidelines for employee bloggers. The decision to create guidelines is something that is personal to your own company’s situation and should be determined based on the input from Marketing, HR, and other departments. It is always better to avoid passing individual blog posts through your PR or legal teams. However, if your blog posts must be reviewed by others in your organization before going live, then have your colleagues focus on the content, not your actual words. Do not let PR people turn the authentic content in your blog into another form of “MarCom copy.”

Blogging technology: Easy and inexpensive

Unlike websites that require design and HTML skills, off-the-shelf blog software offers rapid set-up and easy-to-use features. With basic know-how, you can quickly and easily establish and promote your blog.

• Easy-to-use blogging services are available from Blogger™, TypePad™, WordPress, and others. Research the services based on your needs and choose wisely because it is difficult to switch once your blog is established.
• You will need to choose a URL for your blog. The blogging services all offer a URL that you can customize (such as yourblog.typepad.com). You can also map your blog to your company’s domain (www.yourcompany.com/yourblog) or a custom domain (www.yourblog.com).
• Blogging software makes it easy to choose color, design, font, and to create a simple text-based masthead. You might consider a custom graphical image as your masthead.
• The look and feel of the blog should be complementary to your corporate design guidelines, but it need not be identical.
• Blogging software usually allows you to turn on a comments feature so your visitors are able to comment on your posts.
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a standard format that blog posts are delivered in to subscribers. Make certain that your new blog has a capability to offer an RSS feed.
• Standard practice is to send an electronic “ping” to blog search engines and RSS reader companies when you have a new post on the blog.
• Blogs play a great role in helping to achieve high rankings in search engine results. Smart bloggers understand this and use their blogs to help promote their organization to audiences who are searching on particular words and phrases.
• To build an audience, create links to your blog from your home page, product pages, or online media room. Mention your blog in your email newsletter or offline newsletters and create links to your blog as part of your email signature.

Your customers, potential customers, investors, employees, and the media are all reading blogs and there is no doubt that the corporate blog is a terrific way for technology marketers to tell authentic stories to the market. But building an audience for a corporate blog takes time. Most blog services provide tools for measuring traffic. Use this data to learn which posts are attracting the most attention. You can also learn what sites people are coming from when they visit your blog and what search terms they used to find you. Use this information to continuously improve your blog. And don’t forget, you are the expert.

Case Study: Blog from Environmental Systems Corporation Shows Domain Expertise

According to Steve Drevik, Marketing Communications Director for Environmental Systems Corporation, the company’s core competency is its domain expertise in air pollution monitoring. The company prides itself on maintaining three full-time regulatory experts to keep the company and its customers on the forefront of evolving EPA, state, and local regulatory requirements. This information is not always clear, so interpretations and a deep understanding of what a particular regulatory requirement means and how it applies to the company’s client’s business is invaluable.

Even before Drevik attended Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing seminar he had been plotting and scheming about establishing a corporate blog. “I had been addicted to a couple of blogs related to marketing and design for quite some time,” Drevik says. “I saw a blog as a great way to present our company’s domain knowledge and our position in a highly credible manner. It was one thing to say that we were the experts in our marketing literature and our newsletters. It was quite another to put our thoughts and our opinions out for regulators and customers to review, criticize, and comment. The blog was clearly a great opportunity to cement and expand our position as experts and leaders.”

The first challenge for Drevik was in selling the idea to senior management. “My VP noted that until I mentioned it to him, he had never heard the word ‘blog.’ But over the next two weeks, he had dozens of encounters with the term on the radio, in newspaper articles, and on TV,” Drevik says. “The timing of my proposal was indeed fortunate. I presented the idea to the Sales Director, and all of our Operational Directors. Once it was thoroughly explained, everyone was on board and saw the potential. We were clearly charting new waters in a company with a history of very conservative and limited marketing.”

Creating Plantspeak

Drevik says that one of his greatest challenges was naming the blog. “We had to return to the drawing board several times, a challenge familiar with anyone who has to develop new product names or logos,” Drevik says. He chose the name Plantspeak and also was able to secure the domain name (www.plantspeak.com). Drevik went through a number of blogs and found features that he felt would be key to his blog, such as an easy way for readers to find specific articles of interest. “We settled on the Scoop blog engine, which allows categorization of articles, as well as the ability for readers to create their own ‘clippings’ of particular articles of interest to them,” Drevik says. “Scoop also allows for easy creation of polls, either associated with the main site or with individual articles.”

Environmental Systems Corporation launched the Plantspeak blog at a large trade show using giveaways and a tag line: Hear What Others Are Saying. “Within two weeks, we had over 100 outside registrants, or roughly a quarter of the conference attendees,” Drevik says. “That number quickly rose to over 300 with some more email promotion, good for our niche industry, where the biggest trade show brings in about 500 attendees.”

Drevik says that while he has more work to do to build up his readership, the response so far has been very positive. He has continuing goals for the blog in the company’s marketing plan including cross-linking and cross-promotion from the company’s website (www.envirosys.com). He is clearly enthusiastic about his blog and offers suggestions for anyone considering taking the leap into the blogosphere. “Focus on your core competency as it relates to the customer,” he says. “The blog should not be a blatant marketing tool to promote your company. Use the blog to provide information useful to their daily jobs, with embedded links as appropriate to what you do within your own website. And like any website, promotion and readership take time. Be patient.”

Case Study: Factiva’s Text Mining Blog Highlights Innovation

Glenn Fannick, a Product Development Manager at Factiva®, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, started his blog “Read Between the Mines” (http://www.fannick.blogspot.com/) as an experiment. “My job at Factiva has me working on products that help enterprises monitor blogs, so I thought I should know what it is like to be on the side of the author,” Fannick says. “It has helped me focus on my topic area, given me a creative outlet, and maybe even given Factiva a bit more credibility in the topic on which I write.”

Fannick blogs about a very specific subject area: text mining and media monitoring. “It has helped me to stay on top of the developments in the industry,” he says. “But more than that, it helps me to develop my ideas and challenge myself more than would happen if I just read a trade journal about the topic. My blog is also a good way of connecting with Factiva’s client-facing staff around the world. I’ve received emails from sales staff in other offices who read the blog and had ideas related to their regions. So it is a good internal communications tool too.”

Fannick sees his blog as an important way to humanize what he does. “Business-focused blogs can be a very effective way for a company to ‘show off’ its human resources,” he says. “I think many of Factiva’s clients stay Factiva clients because of the people behind the products. We strive to be open with our clients and blogging is another great way to do that.” He has also utilized the interactive nature of the medium. “Blogging is conversing and often times I have found a conversation starts by reading someone else’s post, commenting on his or her site and then going back to my site and writing more about it,” he says.

“Many people don’t have much interesting to say,” Fannick cautions. “Same thing goes for companies. If you are in a sector that does not lend itself to open dialog or competes mostly on price and not on service or innovation, then there might not be much to talk about. There is really no reason to write a blog if you cannot envision the type of person who would have interest reading it.” He offers sound advice for technology companies considering a blog: “A company probably has to dare to be a different and willing to take some risks. If your company does everything by committee or has to have everything signed off by five levels of executives, your blog will end up reading like your corporate home page or your marketing material—overwritten and uninteresting.”

David Meerman Scott is an instructor for the Pragmatic Marketing Effective Product Marketing seminar and author of the new book Cashing in with Content: How innovative marketers use digital information to turn browsers into buyers.

Check out his blog at www.WebInkNow.com