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Of course, creating a successful business involves more than having great teams, great ideas, great products, and increased visibility— but if your business could do only these four things right, you’d be off to a good start. The real question is how blogging can augment or help in each of these areas.
Ideas
Good ideas are always hard to come by. Several
adventurous companies have begun blogging for new product
ideas, assuming that their users know what they want better than
the companies do. GM’s FastLane blog (http://fastlane.gmblogs
.com) is a great example of this: GM runs new concepts by readers
at the site, inviting them to comment. By providing a space for
customers to interact, you can be assured that they will interact. As
a company, you need to be ready for the feedback that will come
as a result.
Products
Traditional product development leverages a roomful
of customers to make decisions for a world full of people. The end
result is a series of focus group insights that have no real-world
applications. Blogging affords the opportunity to ask the world of
customers about what they actually want.
Visibility
Most traditional visibility campaigns are single
events that rarely go beyond the customer’s first experience. Even
the best viral campaigns that encourage customers to spread
the word are really just single-interaction events. Blogs let your
readers decide how and when to interact with you. Not only
do they give customers control over the relationship, but they
encourage customers to continue to engage with you over time,
thus providing a multitude of experiences they can subsequently
share with friends and associates. Blogs encourage customers to
become participants and participants to become evangelists. And
they encourage everyone to come together as a community.
Teamwork
By creating opportunities for your staff members to
communicate effectively, you create a space for more meaningful
interactions. Blogs come in where other types of communication
fail. It’s been said that e-mail is where information goes to die.
When was the last time you actually looked at a message you’d
archived awhile back, “just in case”? Blogs are where living
information resides. People in your company can find others with
similar interests by searching topics that other internal bloggers
have considered. Creating ad-hoc connections based on content
that is created and owned by internal bloggers is a great way to
keep your teams well oiled, motivated, and in touch with people
with similar passions across your organization. Think about the
efficiencies that could be gained for the whole company if these
experts had an easy way to exchange and archive ideas. |