Interview With Blogging Author John Cass
We are really excited that John Cass, author of “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging has agreed to be the interviewed in our social media optimization series.
John is a research fellow and advisory board member for the Society of New Communications Research and his blog can be found at pr.typepad.com.
1. John, you were one of the early evangelists of blogging when you launched your blog in 2003. Can you tell me about your decision to launch a blog?
I had just moved from Washington State to Massachusetts and was looking for work. My former boss at Portent Interactive, Ian Lurie had been messing around with blogs earlier in the year, I’d tried out a blogspot blog in May of 2003. But when I moved to Boston I decided to start my own blog to determine how blogging can help companies achieve higher rankings on search engines. After I had been writing my blog for a few months I quickly discovered they helped with gaining higher rankings, but also so much more in terms of helping to build a brand for a company.
2. How has your blog helped you promote yourself as an expert on blogging and PR?
The more I learn from other people and other bloggers the more knowledge I have to share with other people. That really is the process of how blogging really works, a blogger needs knowledge and expertise in their topic of choice, and as you write about the subject on your blog and on other blogs you gain extra credibility.
3. You recently wrote a book called Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging. What made you decide to write a book on corporate blogging?
I was approached my contact at Elsevier, my publisher, and the company asked me if I would write a book about online marketing. To me the choice was obvious because I’d been researching corporate blogging for 2 years at that point. I really wanted to write a book about how a company conducts effective blogging. Using a blog is an entirely different way of marketing than say using advertising. Instead of one-way communication, blogging is all about dialogue and interaction with an audience.
4. In you book you talk about a blog audit to size up a particular market. Can you explain what you mean by this?
Well I think that every company should understand whether starting a blog would provide benefits to them and help them to meet their marketing goals. In order to determine if a company will meet its marketing goals the company has to determine if there is sufficient community, audience and their company has the capabilities to write a blog.
The audit is the process of understanding their audience’s blogging community, its size, and the volume of posts, etiquette and culture. Along with the capabilities of the company’s employees to write a blog, by understanding the opportunity and company capabilities a company can determine whether it is worthwhile starting a blog and what resources needed to be committed in order to be successful. The audit gives a company the justification or not, of starting a blog.
5. In starting a corporate blog, what are the five steps that everyone should take?
- A company should understand their marketing goals?
- Conduct an audit of their blogging community.
- Understand the resources and capabilities of their company to determine if there is value in blogging.
- If a company starts blogging, conduct training within the company on how to operate within social media communities and set expectations about what will happen and what will not.
- Have a strategy for content on the blog and in other blogs.
6. What steps do companies most frequently overlook? What is the most common mistake that companies make when setting up a blog?
Not understanding that blogging is not just about putting content on the blog, but also getting involved in the community by commenting on other blogs, and building relationships with other bloggers.
7. Is a corporate blog appropriate for everyone? In what industries does a corporate blog work best? In what industries does it not work as well?
Blogs may not be appropriate for every industry. The technology industry especially in the software industry is very important for blogging because so many people in the industry understand RSS and blogs. About 50% of the Fortune 500 companies blogging, are in the technology sector. The healthcare and biotechnology industries are difficult industries for blogging, there are so many regulations from the FDA. Though there has been some movement in this area, it’s still difficult for drug companies to consider blogging.
8. Can you give some examples of companies who do a really good job with blogging?
Dell is probably the best example in the country at the moment.
Dell had real problems with customer service because they were not listening effectively to customer complaints. Jeff Jarvis from the Buzzmachine blog identified this and acted as a catalyst in the marketplace for other customers to complain about their problems with Dell machines. Jeff’s comments were picked up by other bloggers and eventually national news media, the episode or post known as Dell Hell. The Dell stock price suffered and eventually Kevin Rollins in 2007, Dell’s CEO was replaced by Michael Dell, the founder of Dell. However, the new Dell blogging strategy implemented in 2006 has started to turn things around for the company, listening to customers has changed opinions and developed new ideas.
IBM, Macromedia – now adobe was good. SAP is good as well. Lots of technology companies. As for small companies I personally like Tim Jackson of the Masi Guy blog.
9. What are some of the opportunities in blogging that you see that marketers are not taking advantage of?
Customer service and product development – in my experience the companies that do blogging well are those companies that have customer service or product development bloggers. Blogging is all about dialogue and having a conversation with customers, customer service questions or getting ideas for improving a product are two ways that blogging can really help a company to provide either good customer service or improve products.
10. Tell me about the biggest blunder you’ve seen in corporate blogging?
Dell launching its corporate blog and stating that they would not answer any customer service questions. However, in the end Dell does answer questions anyway.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Interviews, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Jul 23rd, 2007
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:36 am
[…] We are really excited that John Cass, author of ” Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging has agreed to be the interviewed in our social media optimization series. via Social Media Optimization July 23rd, 2007 under Dell | +del.icio.us +Digg +reddit […]
July 30th, 2007 at 3:56 am
[…] Social Media Optimization bragte forleden et interview med John Cass, der er manden bag bogen “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging”. Mens interviewet og bogen er meget møntet på et amerikansk marked, kommer han med fem gode råd, som du absolut bør overveje med dig selv, inden du kaster dig ud i at skrive din første virksomheds blog. […]