The Out-Smarts Blog and Podcast

1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses.

2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word.

3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you - like Skype - the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively - like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website.

4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme.

5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much easier than you think.

6. When you find interesting articles, pages or clips, share them with your others in your field. I Stumble but hear that Magnolia and Deli.cio.us are great for this too.

7. Join Facebook, MySpace or Linked In (or all three) and get networking. You know the old adage about a friend of a friend being your friend too: its so much easier to do business with people you’ve been referred to by a friend or colleague.

8. Use Internet advertising technologies such as AdWords or Facebook Social to reach and promote to the right audience.

9. Forums or chat rooms where your audience collaborate are great ways to get involved, join the conversation and establish expertise with a wider audience.

10. Get wiki with it. Join Wikipedia and share your knowledge (but be careful not to be blatantly corporate or your posts will just get deleted) with the global audience.

Julie Anderson, VP of Marketing at PeopleMaps was kind enough to share their experiences with corporate blogging on our Facebook discussion forum. PeopleMaps puts blog technology to good use for different purposes in their organisation:

“PeopleMaps has been blogging for a while - and we do it in a few different ways:

We use our main company blog as our news channel out to all our audiences. We ask new customers to subscribe to email updates to be sure they’re kept up to date with our activities. We don’t blog all the time on this channel - people are too busy to read our news every day!

We use 2 other blogs to speak to two separate audiences - our consumer audience and our corporate audience. This allows us to be specific in our topics - and builds up our traffic independently from our website SEO and online advertising activities.

Internally we blog to keep various other groups informed of our activities - e.g. our shareholders. These blogs are private as we don’t want just anyone to read that info - the blog technology is just really easy to use and a great way to push out information informally, without relying on email.

Oh, and we use Typepad currently as it was the easiest platform to get started with. We’re messing around with WordPress for some other activities though.”

Out-Smarts has a business profile in Facebook and within a day of creating our page we have 7 fans! We’re testing the waters to see how we can use this profile to share our knowledge and expertise; to collaborate with interested parties and to assess if Social Ads is a viable Internet advertising tool. Become a fan and check up on our progress or submit to our discussions - the current one being innovative corporate blog uses.

According to a Gartner report, corporate spending on Web 2.0 is set to increase. Companies are catching on to the benefits of Web 2.0 and these technologies are set to gain a bigger share of the corporate budget in coming months.

Web 2.0 is the ineractive web. It gives companies the ability to go full circle in their on-line relationships with clients (it closes the feedback loop and turns it into a constant cycle of communication as well as an invaluable source of research). Web 2.0 also has applications within the organisation allowing widely dispersed teams (for example) to communicate more effectively and work better together thus positively impacting productivity rates.

When it comes to Web 2.0, collaboration is key and any area of your business that will positively benefit from enhanced collaboration and communication could potentially benefit from implementing a Web 2.0 strategy.

One of the biggest challenges for corporate bloggers is attracting visitors and getting them to come back. I found a blog post from Australia while on StumbleUpon today. The site I stumbled is dedicated to driving on-line loyalty through great content and it has some of that. But it was the name attracted me first: Skelliewag - its sounds mischeivous - I had to find out more.  I discovered a valuable resource for bloggers.

A recent post talks about ways to turn new visitors to loyal readers. Tips include: Always welcome, thank and establish rapport with commenters; ask questions; stick to core topics and visit and comment in the blog of your commenters. There’s 14 more great tips in the post.

Blogging has long been dismissed by traditional print media as being unprofessional, not “real news” or too subjective. It would appear that these opinions are changing. Newspapers in particular are altering their perspectives and looking to blog posts to rekindle the flagging interest in their editorials. Our local rag, the Vancouver Sun now boasts several staff writers who publish blogs regularly under categories such as business, news, features and so on with varying levels of response. The Sun is using the blog tool to reach a younger, wider audience.

There is a lot to be learned from a businesses perspective from this. Blogs are associated in many people’s minds as on-line journals and many question how that relates to business. A corporate blog isn’t a company diary, its a way of communicating your message more effectively, establishing your expertise and like the newspapers are learning - its a way to reach a wider audience.

Your corporate blog is up and running. You’re off to the races with lots of witty anecdotes and already traffic to your website has increased. In order to build on this initial success, don’t forget the three C’s of blogging.

Consistency - write consistently. Many bloggers write posts daily. For corporate blogs the recognized minimum is 2 blogs per week so get on with it will you! If you can’t write consistently or if you set up a blog get others involved and you ultimately lose interest then bring it down: there’s nothing more frustrating than finding a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2005 or worse, has three posts and then nothing.

Clarity - it should always be clear to readers what your posts are about. Write short sentences and keep articles brief to maximize effect. Get your message across in the most straight forward way. People don’t have the time to read page upon page of your ruminations.

Collaboration - blogging is all about collaboration so stimulate your audience and encourage them to join in. Ask for questions and opinions in an effort to elicit comments and always remember to follow up with those who comment to encourage them to come back.

Do you have any C’s to add to the list?

Corporate blogging is a regular topic here with the focus often on the positive promotional benefits a good corporate blog can bring. I was reminded lately of the impact of blogs as a tool to facilitate market research when I read an article in this month’s CPSA’s Contact Magazine called “The Battle Over Blogs” by Ally Motz. A random study conducted by SiriusDecisions of the media mentions of 10 large software companies discovered that consumer product or service experience posts were, for the most part, not positive in nature.

The article looked at this prevalence of negativity in blog postings and pointed out that this feedback provided a valuable opportunity. If companies monitor what’s being said about them they can respond more effectively to negative PR and can improve their offering based on real customer insights.

Monitoring blog comments and posts relating to your product is a must and will help you keep your finger on the pulse of your business. Criticism is never easy to take and a thick skin is an asset. Look on the blogosphere as an opportunity for your company to track user sentiment and by doing so you will uncover a mine of information to improve your product offering, enhance your service standards and promote your offering more effectively. The best part is that all this key data can be unearthed at a much lower cost than via traditional market research studies such as surveys and its all right there today waiting to be tapped.

1. Customer Service - your company could provide a blog aimed at improving customer service. Users can share their experiences of using the your company’s product or services but beware, not everyone will be positive about their experience giving you the perfect opportunity to resolve their issues and prove your customer service excellence in the blogosphere. Not only that but it provides the perfect forum to monitor customer preferences.
2. Which leads me to market research - your blog, the comments it gets and the blog of others in your community are vital resources that you should be using to conduct market research.
3. Humanising - a blog can be used to put a face on your company familiarising customers and prospects with the people behind the brand and building trust. Company board members and staff members can contribute and in so doing make them seem more real - more approachable. See the effect company wide blogging had on Microsoft as referenced in Naked Conversations.
4. Internal communication portal - a blog is a great way to communicate personnel changes, policy updates, CEO commentary and company events.
5. Establish expertise - this is the main focus of this blog i.e. to show people like you that we know what we’re talking about so that perhaps you’ll think of us us when considering your Internet marketing strategy.
6. Expand Network - a blog is a great way to expand your network. Its always good blog practice to respond to those who comment on your web page and in so doing you are establishing contact and networking.
7. Leads - I am not too enthused about using a blog to generate leads but it can be done. Remember if you do this though that outright selling and self promotion are considered taboo in the blogosphere and will only piss people off.
8. Brand - a blog is a great way to further entrench your brand.
9. Generate revenue - many successful blogs put their traffic to good advantage by promoting related products and affiliate services to them through ads that are tailored to the intended audience and earn affiliate revenues in doing so.
10. Grow your base - a blog is a great way to extend your companies reach beyond its traditional geographical base. This blog gets comments and traffic from people as far and wide as India and the UK.

I see long tails all over the place these days. Its probably something to do with the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson that I finished reading a while ago. A long tail market is one where the diverse needs of every consumer are met regardless of what makes them tick. I got to thinking about social networking and what happens once it goes beyond the masses. Will there eventually be social networks for every possible interest and segment of the population? Why not? the technology is there to do it and likely the demand too. I decided to do some research….

First everyone flocked to Facebook and MySpace - these are the popular “hit” services today with millions joining and interacting daily but change is afoot. I began to notice long tail applications within MS and FB such as the facebook dog club a social network for pooches (that incedentaly has over 270,ooo users) then I began to receive invites from other social networking applications aimed at niche segments such as Melcrum the social network for communicators, O’jeez the social network for entrepreneurs , and Naymz for professionals. Looking on Wikipedia for a list of social network I found 90 in categories ranging from football to gothic industrial culture.

Social networking is the perfect application to reach long tail maturity rapidly and I predict that today’s 90 social network sites will grow quickly to encompass corporate networking requirements as well as the networking needs of individuals no matter how diverse.