Collaboration Cast

Recently Bill Marriott in a MSNBC news interviewed called himself the blogger and chief of the Marriott hotel chain.  He told MSNBC that he writes all of his blogs on paper first before posting them. He also proudly boasted that his blog has helped his hotel chain generate over $4 million in hotel bookings.  Bill has set the bar for other companies who are looking to blog.

As Marriott has proven, a Blog can help a company generate sales and for a $4 million return a Chief Executive Blogger dedicated to blogging initiatives may prove a great return-in-investment.  Out of the Fortune 500 companies, 60 companies are taking blogs seriously.  This number has tripled from two years ago.

Some of these companies include:

Coca Cola
Dell
Southwest Airlines 
Kodak 

As Marriott has done, companies should start thinking about blogging and how to drive and track revenues from this new channel of conversation and customer engagement.

Should your business blog or not blog? Is blogging just a fad and when will it go away. IDC predicts that user generated content will grow to become the dominant type of content in the digital universe, with more than 70% of the content being user generated. The numbers prove IDC’s forecast, in 2007 Technorati published a blog citing the growth of blogs. Some of the highlights include:

Blogging is more than a trend, companies need to learn how to blog. Customers want to hear from companies. Business Week published some of the benefits blogging can provide companies:

1. Blogs are a great way to introduce new products and services to visitors without recoding.
2. Blogs are a great way to generate repeat traffic – pure gold.
3. Blogs tell you what customers like and don’t like – first-hand market research.
4. A blog is a great way to keep product reviews in front of your buyers.
5. A blog entry can be easily syndicated to other sites – all pointing back to your site.
6. A blog is easy to set up, easy to maintain.
7. Search engines love blogs. Tips for gaining traffic are included in our article “SEO Your Blog“.
8. A blog keeps your site fresh.
9. A blog has become part of visitors’ expectations.
10. A blog is lots of fun.

For those that want to get started, I recently read Chris Brogan’s article on 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice.

I thought he gave some great tips that could be applied for companies who want to start their own blogs. Here are some of the points I found most useful from his blog:

1. If you’re blogging, make that a home base for all your other efforts.
2. Pick 3 social networks to join based on where your customers might be. 3 might sound like too few, but it probably will be too many.
3. On those networks and on your “passport” accounts, make sure you link everything back to the blog.
4. Get a second (maybe even a 3rd) person in the company to build accounts on these places. Nice to have backups, in case you get busy.
5. Build an editorial calendar to think about your posting schedule and subject matter.
6. Subscribe to 50 or more blogs in a similar space as yours, including competitors, and any industry blogs.
7. On all your presence points, be human, and write a human-sounding profile. Use a human-seeming profile picture. (Did I mention “human?”)
8. After you’ve written your first blog post, take some time to comment on some of those 50 blogs, but NOT about your first post.
9. Make sure it’s easy for people to subscribe to your blog, via a reader and also via email.
10. Run periodic checks of your blog/site using Website Grader to see if you’re technically sound and findable.
11. Use tagging and other metadata to improve your blog’s search features. Most newer blog software has this built in. If not, look for plugins.
12. For whatever reason, graphics in posts improve audience. Check out Flickr’s Creative Commons pool for how to use which kinds of graphics appropriately.
13. Consider a nice clean theme for your blog’s design. There are many free themes for different blogs, and some inexpensive ones like Thesis that are worth every penny.
14. Outside of your blog, be sure to update/refresh the information on your social networks every two or three weeks. USE the networks more often, but refresh your profiles and other info.
15. Seek out opportunities to guest post on more popular blogs in your space. Don’t be spammy and over-link to your own site/posts. Add value.
16. On social networks, look for ways to contribute, even when it’s not directly related to your company/product.
17. Continue building relationships outside of having a specific need. Don’t ONLY try to build relationships with customers, for example.
18. To create consistent content, read daily, and not just for your industry. Skim, synthesize, and post.
19. Use notepad files to jot post ideas down when you don’t have a moment to write. Return frequently.
20. Riff off other blog posts you like, and add some value beyond linking back to those original posts (and always link back to those posts).
21. Go to the grocery store news stand and find popular magazines. Convert their story titles to blog post titles for your field.
22. Skim news aggregator sites like Reddit or Digg (or what’s appropriate to your industry), and create posts from there.
23. Ask your audience what they need, what they’re struggling with.
24. Revisit a month of posts and see what you’ve covered the least.
25. Think about things your customers/stakeholders/prospects might need and write about that, even if it’s a bit off-topic.
26. Check your stats to see what people are searching for, and address it.
27. Branch out your blogging into video and audio where appropriate.
28. Look into building a community platform around your content platform.
29. Invite your audience in to guest post where appropriate.
30. Add social bookmarking plugins like Add This to your blog to improve distribution.
31. Look for cross-promotional opportunities for like-minded blogs in your space.
32. Consider starting groups on your social networks (such as a Facebook group) to further discuss the space you’re covering.
33. Remember to comment on other people’s blogs frequently, and show your participation in the communities where you have presence.
34. Occasionally produce PDF versions of your better posts and email them to customers and prospects to encourage growing your audience.
35. Consider a conversion engine like a free offer to help sort prospects from fans and audience.
36. Move towards measurements quickly, as these are often where companies decide their vote.
37. Create a simple report on how you will report what you’re doing for upper management.
38. Work out which numbers might matter. Comments received. Links in. Times bookmarked?
39. Rank each blog post on effectiveness based on your own criteria. Review weekly and monthly.
40. Figure out a “downstream” metric that drives real business value. Reduce costs to call center? Sales leads?
41. Never count # of friends or # of followers as a valuable metric. It’s quality in that case.
42. As soon as you can, find ways to tie your numbers to marketing and sales numbers where appropriate.
43. Move to automate the numbers collection parts early. Keep the sentiment reporting parts human.
44. Set 3 month goals to review progress with upper management. Determine if this is having any impact.
45. Though these last 10 tips are about numbers, NEVER treat people like numbers in social media.

A simple search can provide you with several success stories of niche blogs. One of those is the story of Ken Savage who was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and in a effort two learn more about the disease he started a blog called BattleDiabetes.com.

BattleDiabetes.com attracts over 7,000 to 9,000 pageviews on a given day and brought in almost $40,000 a year in supplemental income from online advertisement.

If Ken can do it, why can’t your company start blogging and benefiting from this new social media channel? Just Blog!