Why (A Few) Executives Use Blogs to Communicate with Their Customers

The eyes of most (and by most I mean all) CEOs, owners and executives of the small to mid-size companies I know still glaze over when I say the words “blog”, “online community”, or “social media marketing”.

My personal challenge is to find a way to explain the "new marketing/public relations” two-way dialogs and authentic conversations vs. the old, traditional marketing–one-way, interruption marketing/advertising. But I digress.

Dan Greenfield (blogger and corporate spokesperson for Earthlink) did a great post quoting Peter Kim, analyst from Forrester Research, about so-called, client side blogs. These 13 client side blogs are people blogging that are not consultants, service providers (like yours truly), etc.  The client side bloggers are folks that only represent their company—not multiple clients.  I like to think of them as company blogs.

These bloggers were asked why they blog and why they think there are so few client side bloggers (company bloggers) out there. Here are a couple of my favorite answers:

CB Whittemore, her Flooring the Consumer blog here

”I blog to get the word out about topics that matter to our industry and marketplace as quickly as possible to demonstrate that our brand is paying attention to the issues that matter; to digitally capture reference materials and ideas that add value to our customers; to better appreciate how social media works [and figure out how to apply it elsewhere].

“So few client side marketing professionals blog due to lack of time; too strong an appreciation for traditional marketing; not enough understanding of how new marketing [aka social media] works and how powerful it is; belief that it’s a fad and/or not relevant; risk aversion; lack of internal or corporate support.”

CB Whittemore’s blog is “A marketing blog about improving the consumer experience, particularly in flooring…”

Jim Cahill, Emerson Process Management

”Personally, I blog because I enjoy sharing what I learn about. For the Emerson Process Experts blog, we had a need to raise the awareness of the expertise around Emerson Process Management. I thought the best way we could do that is to tell stories about what they do in working with process manufacturers to solve problems. I had a chance to learn much more about what some of our experts in all the Emerson Process Management divisions do. I enjoy the challenge of trying to distill what I learn down to something I hope will be interesting for those who read the blog.

The blog provides a conversational way to do that, and provides the opportunity for a two-way dialog given the comments area. Much of this conversation still happens offline in emails, but I’ve seen an up tick in a comment or two in recent posts.”

Here’s my summary of reasons for company executives to blog:

1. Company blogs are another channel to communicate with your prospects and customers.
2. Outside of the time involved, blogging is a very low cost way to start and maintain ongoing customer conversations.
3. You can quickly demonstrate your knowledge about your customers’ issues.
4. You can tell stories about how your products, services and employees are making a difference in your customers’ lives.

Now, who doesn’t want another channel to tell stories about how you help your customers?  Any thoughts of better ways to start and maintain near-real time customer conversations?

Read the complete post by Dan Greenfield here.