One way to greatly improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your company’s blogging efforts is by tracking the right metrics.  When you are creating the strategy for your company blog, one of the things you need to focus on is making sure that the metrics you track match the goal you have for the blog.  For example, if your company wants to use its blog as a tool to build awareness among current and potential customers, then one of the metrics you might track would be number of email subscribers.  You might also want to look at number of comments per post and also the number of email inquiries or Contact Form submissions.

But you need to make sure that you are tracking metrics that feed back into the goal you have for your blog.  Once you have settled in on the right metrics, then you can customize your blog and your blogging efforts so that these metrics are optimized.

For example, one of the metrics I measure at MackCollier.com is number of email subscribers.  Up until May 15, 2010, I was averaging a new email subscriber every three days.  In the 65 days since then, I have added an additional 87 email subs.  What changed to cause this spike?  I moved the email subscription form to the TOP of the blog, “above the fold.”  That simple change has netted me an 311% increase in email subscribers.  Not too shabby.

So when you look at your own blog, ask yourself two questions:

1. Are we tracking the right metrics? If you are looking to build engagement on your blog, then traffic might not be as important as number of comments.  Likewise, if you are looking to increase sales, then you would probably place more importance on referral traffic from the blog to the website, rather than number of new blog feed subscribers.

Think about what it is you want to accomplish with your blogging efforts, then track the metrics that feed into that goal.

2. Are we making it easy for visitors to perform the desired actions?  If you want visitors to subscribe via email to your blog, then is it best to place the subscription form at the TOP of the blog, or buried at the bottom of the second sidebar?

Think about what actions you want visitors to take on your blog, then find ways to encourage this action.  It could be something as simple as putting your calls to action in the proper place, as with the above example about email subscriptions.  Or maybe you need to figure out a strategy for increasing comments, if that’s a key metric you are tracking.

Track the right metrics for your blogging goals, then look for ways to increase the desired actions from your readers.

On the surface, this is a smart move for Ann Taylor, as it rewards mobile customers for engaging in existing activities.  It’s also a smart promotional play; as customers check in at Ann Taylor locations (the program is being piloted in 8 NYC stores for now), this activity is often shared with their online social communities, such as on Twitter.

So how could Ann Taylor (and other retailers that are offering similar initiatives) build on this FourSquare promotion?

Let’s look at the Ann Taylor example, and the small NYC pilot FourSquare program they have launched.  If I were consulting with Ann Taylor, I would suggest that they consider creating a social/mobile marketing advisory panel from among the customers that are most frequently using FourSquare to check in at NYC’s Ann Taylor locations.  As my friend CK can tell you, while social media is big, mobile marketing is poised to become gigantic in the coming years.  By reaching out directly to some of Ann Taylor’s most passionate customers that are also social media and mobile media savvy, Ann Taylor could get some incredibly valuable advice directly from its customers about how to improve its mobile marketing and communication efforts.

I recently worked with Dell on a similar initiative.  Dell identified a few dozen customers that were actively using social media tools to discuss the company, and Dell brought them into its Round-Rock headquarters to meet with them and get feedback directly from them on how the company could improve its efforts.  Over two days, Dell heard from its most passionate customers about how the company can improve its marketing, product design/development, customer service, and social media efforts.  I was blown away by the event and can tell you that the discussions were incredible, and a joy to be a part of.

Ann Taylor could do the same thing, and I think it would be a wonderfully smart move for them.

As many people do, I use Twitter primarily as a tool to connect with other people. Now for the most part, I’d always had some so-called unwritten rules about my Twitter usage. The main one was that time spent on Twitter during ‘business hours’ was mainly for business usage, while time spent ‘after hours’, or on the weekend, I would give myself leeway to use Twitter more as a chat facilitator to talk about pretty much whatever I wanted.
But I noticed that clients and companies that contacted me about work would, on occasion, reference my tweets made during my ‘personal’ time. Nothing shocking, it might be someone saying they didn’t realize I was a Bama fan, or that they also liked Flash Forward, but it made me realize that the people that are following the content I create on Twitter, and on any social site, don’t understand my unwritten rules. They are basically approaching the content I create (and the content we all create), as a channel.
And I think this is an important point for us to remember. I’m constantly having people that work in this space ask me who they should be following. If I tell them to follow Jason, and Jason has one INCREDIBLY profound business tweet once every 2 weeks, my friends might not stick with Jason’s tweets, and might begin to question my judgment in recommending them.
Yes, the very name ’social media’ implies that interaction is going to take place. But we have to remember that so many people simply want to consume content, not interact with it. To these people, they look at us as being content channels, and nothing more.
Am I saying that we should change how we use social media in order to placate others? Absolutely not, but I am saying that I do think we should be aware of the content we are creating, and how it is being received, and by who. If you’re primarily using your blog as a tool to get more sales, but also like a good political rant every once in a while, you have to consider that your potential customer might not like your rant about how much their political party of choice is dead wrong.
So for now, I am using Twitter more for business, and less overall. How are you using Twitter and other sites? Is one for business, the other for personal, or do you mix the two? How do you manage different sites being used in different ways?

And Amanda was about to leave a tweet that would set in motion a chain of events that would make her the most popular topic on Twitter, that would net her over $11,000.00 in two hours, and make her a case study for how quickly ideas spread via social media channels.
The infamous tweet that started it all was left at 9:15 pm. She stated simply: “i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER, motherf*cker.”
Brilliance.
What happened next was completely unexpected. But before I jump into the story, I should clarify that Amanda is Amanda Palmer, an indie musician that has leveraged Twitter as a platform to engage and delight her fans and followers, which now number over 45,000.
So it should come as no surprise that the above tweet became a rallying cry for her fans and followers on Twitter to join in the spontaneous festivities. Fans quickly chimed in that they TOO were losers AND at home alone on their computers on that Friday night (Amanda clarified that ‘losers on their iPhones DON’T COUNT. you have to be at home, sitting on your ass, pref. in sweatpants’).
Then they decided they needed a hashtag, so #LOFNOTC was quickly created. A list of demands for the government was quickly agreed upon, such as ‘No taxes on coffee, or vodka’. And of course ‘Everyone gets a pony’ (Because everyone wants a pony).
Someone said that the #LOFNOTC needed a logo, so Amanda quickly scribbled down the logo below, and shared it with her Twitter followers. Someone tweeted that if that logo was on a t-shirt that they’d buy it. Immediately others agree, make that t-shirt, and they’d buy it.
Amanda, stunned that this is happening, puts in a hurried call to her webmaster. She informs him that her one silly tweet has now led to the #LOFNOTC hashtag being the most popular term on Twitter (in the course of an hour). She also tells him that she made a crack about making t-shirts, and now her fans were begged her to sell them to them. So her webmaster quickly threw up a site so her fans could buy the t-shirt with the logo for #LOFNOTC that Amanda had just created.
They sold over 200 in an hour at $25 a pop. Amanda recapped the night’s events on her blog the next morning, and they sold another 200 t-shirts. All because of one silly tweet.

This did NOT happen because Amanda is a rockstar. This was not planned, it was spontaneous. It happened because Amanda created something and invited her fans to help her mold that creation and share in the ownership of the finished product.
To share in the ownership. To us this is ‘Look what Amanda did’, but to every one of the #LOFNOTC that answered Amanda’s call, it was ‘Look what WE did’.
‘We’ usually beats ‘me’ when it comes to social media. THAT is ultimately why this worked. How is your company moving from ‘me’ to ‘we’ with your social media efforts?

What I’m noticing, and surprisingly this comes from the so-called ‘experts’ as well, is that many people can be decidedly anti-social in the way they use social media. I’ve seen company representatives get snippy and angry if they are challenged even mildly in blog comments. People on Twitter that speak in statements, that actually discourages interaction. Of course there’s always no shortage of people that promote themselves and their companies, but never anyone else.
I guess the lesson here is, the best hammer in the world won’t make you a better carpenter, if you don’t know how to use it.
Here’s some ways I’ve learned to be more social with social media:
1 – Promote other people. All it does is make others more likely to promote you, and want to interact with you. Can seem completely counter intuitive to companies that want to use social media to ‘get their message out there’, but it works. Every morning I spend 1-2 hours reading feeds and links to interesting articles. These get RTed like crazy on Twitter, and what happens when I link to one of my posts? That’s right, it gets RTed even more because more people are following me because I promote interesting articles and posts.
2 – Watch your language. I don’t mean what you say, but HOW you say it. How you interact with others greatly determines if and how they will respond. If you speak in statements, that shuts down communication. It comes across to others as ‘I am right, there’s no need to discuss this further’. If your tone is ‘here’s what I think’, then that invites others to share their opinions.
3 – Show people that you value their opinions. Just as I was writing this post, I noticed this tweet flash up from Chris Brogan. He said ‘Your responses were better than my idea. Thank you.’ Great example of empowering people to interact with you. From my experience, the room is ALWAYS smarter than I am, so anything I can do to encourage interaction with everyone else, means I am going to learn something.

4 – Show people that you care. Here’s a Twitter-tip. I now follow well over 3,000 people, and I honestly can only interact regularly with a fraction of that number. So there’s a lot of people I follow that I rarely, if ever, tweet with. But I want to let these people know that I appreciate them and am paying attention to them. One thing I do is if I see someone I rarely tweet with mention that they got a new job, or a new car, or got married, etc, I will send them a quick tweet congratulating them. Doesn’t take 5 secs, but it quickly let’s them know that I’m watching and care enough to congratulate them.
5 – Say ‘thank you’ early and often. It matters. This isn’t rocket science, it’s social media.
What do you think? Are you seeing the same things I am, are you noticing how people use social media in some unsocial ways? Do you have more tips you can share on being social with social media? What works for you?

I’ve blogged about this several times before, but one of the key elements of building a vibrant community is to JOIN that community. And by that I don’t mean that simply using Twitter, as @biz, @ev and @jack do. But I mean interacting with community members and LISTENING to them.
A year ago, we were wondering why Twitter was constantly having outages, without ever reaching out to its community to let us know when, what or why. Then this week, Twitter suddenly announces that it’s made a change in the tweets you get from people you are following. Previously, if you followed someone’s tweets, you saw ALL of their tweets.
But earlier this week, Twitter changed the settings so that if someone you were following left a reply to someone else that you are NOT following, then you didn’t see that tweet (from the person you WERE following). Of course, this move was immediately and overwhelming blasted by the Twitter community.
And Twitter heard the backlash, and updated their blog with a post Weds morning entitled ” Whoa, Feedback!,” where Biz implies that Twitter was apparently taken aback at the criticism that this move received.
To me, this is pretty scary. First, it’s scary that Twitter would make such a huge change in the site’s basic functionality without asking its users. And second, it’s scary that the reaction seemed to have surprised Twitter. This tells me that they are disconnected from the Twitter userbase, and what they really want from the site.
It’s tough to have a vibrant community when you keep them at an arm’s distance. My advice to Twitter today is the same as it was a year ago; don’t take your community for granted, or they might just stop being your community.

In this interview, Sandy gives us her take on the importance of social media for businesses, and some background on some of the topics she’ll be covering during her session at the B2B Forum in Boston.

Q – At the Marketing Profs B2B Forum, you’ll be leading a session entitled Marketing 2.0: Integrating Social Media Into Your Marketing Mix. How important is it for a company to consider integrating social media into their existing marketing plan, or should they try to make social media separate from the company’s other communication efforts?
A – I believe firmly that social media represents a new set of marketing tools. By integrating the Web 2.0 technologies into a marketing plan, you strengthen the plan overall to drive business. If you isolate your social media team, you will not see the results that you need. In fact, I think just as strong compelling value propositions are core to all marketing, social techniques and the use of Web 2.0 technology should be core to all integrated marketing going forward. (You can learn more about a formal methodology I recommend by visiting the site for my recent book, The New Language of Marketing 2.0.)
For example, if you run in-person events today to drive your business, you can add in a Twitter drive to the event to increase registrations. You can generate customer loyalty — or fans — by having them tell their stories on blogs, or post pictures on Flickr. You can even use web 2.0 to help follow-up on the leads with enurturing or form an online community to supplement your in-person customer boards. The point is that in the magic is in the marketing mix. Not the tools!
Q – You work at a very large company. What special considerations do you think a large company faces in trying to use social media, that a small business for example, might not have to worry about?
A – Well, I think everything is a trade-off. There are some advantages that the small companies have and some that the big companies have. Since I work for a large company, I am envious at times at how fast a small company can experiment. This area is changing so rapidly and so many new tools are being added daily, that I think that being able to change on a dime is crucial or to add in a new tool without having to get tons of signoffs could make the different in a first-mover advantage. But large companies have more resources. And that comes with an advantage as well.
However, the bottom line is I think the primary difference here is not in big or small. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers. The hair stylist I go to just recently used Facebook to increase the purchase of one of his services by 500%. Why? Because he used social media tools with his traditional customer retention methods. He understands what his customers are looking for and could add value. This is similar as to when IBM really listens to its customers and develops its next product by learning not only from its current customers, and focus groups, but by dialoguing in the blogs on product requirements and betas. The bottom line is do you know your goals and your differentiation well enough to use the tools appropriately?

Q – As you know, many companies are interested in learning more about social media. What do you think are some of the common misconceptions these companies have about social media?
A – Great question! I think there are a few! First, some companies believe that social media is a magic elixir. They don’t realize that social media is just another set of tools to add to the marketing toolbox.
Second, some companies focus on the coolness of social media. They get enamored with the tools themselves, and don’t focus on what they are trying to do — drive business!
And finally I think that companies don’t realize that this is brand new. It is not what they studied in college and is bigger than marketing. It encompasses the business. Social technologies should be part of your market intelligence, your strategic delivery, your development cycle, your customer support, your marketing and your sales. It is a cultural change in how we create business.

Q – One of the biggest concerns about using social media, is finding a way to get measurable results. For the company that’s wanting to find the ROI of their social media efforts, what should they be looking to track to tell if their social media initiatives are effective?
A – We are all already in the practice of tracking the effectiveness of all the elements of our marketing mix. So it is a great thing to measure the value of social media. I love what Dell did with its Twitter channel by using a special discount code to enable it to track the value. At IBM we add in Web 2.0 elements and measure the effectiveness — whether driving new opportunities or progressing current opportunity — over time. That said, think about the value of a relationship — it is hard to measure that personal relationship just as it is in measuring the online one !
Now even as I write this, IBM and MIT did try to estimate the value of the online connection. IBM Research and MIT’s Sloan School of Management found that the average e-mail contact was worth $948 in revenue. To unearth that and other data, they used math formulas to analyze the email traffic, address book and buddy lists of 2600 IBM consultants over a year!
However, you can’t measure everything and just because you can measure something doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to be watching!

Q – Is social media right for every business?
A – I think that this question is the wrong one. The right one is — what is your overall goal for your company and its business model? What is your compelling value proposition that truly sets you apart?
Then you can decide which social media tools to add to your overall company strategy and execution.
* * * * *
Are you coming to the MarketingProfs B2B Forum? The early bird discount ends next Friday, May 15: Time is running out to save $150 off your registration, so don’t wait! Plus, anyone who registers by May 15 will be entered into a drawing to win two free nights at The Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel – a $500 value! (Good for conference dates only.)
Today at NOON EST: Get a *free* sneak peek at the B2B Forum in a lively session from speakers Jason Baer, Founder & President, Convince & Convert; Lauren Goldstein, VP of Strategic Planning, Babcock & Jenkins; Maria Villar, Managing Partner, Business Data Leadership and Former, Vice President, Enterprise Business Information, IBM; and Karen Breen Vogel, CEO/President, ClearGauge; moderated by our own Roy Young.
Register here.

My advice to her is the same I will give to you. If you see negative comments on a blog/site, especially those based on inaccurate information, you need to address those comments. In this case, the negative comments seemed to be originating from the article’s implication that this company did not provide health insurance to its employees.
Prior to my friend Allison commenting, the post had 6 comments, all of which were either critical, or downright negative toward Hardwood Artisians. Allison did exactly what you should do if your company is coming under fire. She kept her cool, politely thanked the commenters for their feedback, and set the record straight about how the company handled providing health insurance to its employees. And she also did something else that’s very important; she invited commenters to continue to leave her feedback.

Hi, I’m the Director of Marketing for Hardwood Artisans.
Thanks to all the commenters for all the interest in Hardwood Artisans. I do have one quick correction, no fault of Tom’s. We’ve had health insurance available through the company since August of 2007. Employees can elect to take advantage of the company plan, but some have their own plans or get insurance through their spouses. Personally, I have the company plan.
If anyone would like more information or has more feedback, feel free to email me at alison@hardwoodartisans.com or post here. I’m always happy to answer questions.
Alison Heath

When Allison left that comment, the entire tone of the conversation changed. Prior to Allison’s comment, 6 comments were left to the post about Hardwood Artisians, all of them were negative. After Allison’s comment, 11 other people commented, and ten of them were positive. Most even came to the defense of HA, and one commenter added: “Still, if nothing else, my hat is off to Alison for being willing to step into the lion’s den to answer questions”
As I told Allison, as soon as she joined the conversation and encouraged interaction, the tone of the dialogue changed from people throwing negative comments AT the company, to the commenters talking WITH Allison. And then Allison later blogged about the article on HA’s own blog.
What can you learn from how Allison handled this situation?

1 – If someone is leaving negative comments about your company, respond.
2 – Be thankful and polite. Nothing escalates a negative comment into a full-bore flamewar faster than an ‘Oh yeah?!?’ reply from the company.
3 – If commenters are jumping to the wrong conclusion about your company, kindly correct them with the proper information.
4 – Thank them for their feedback, and encourage them to provide more. Leave your email address so they can contact you off the blog, if they choose.
If you are thankful and respectful toward commenters, even those that are attacking your company, the end result will almost always be a positive experience. Allison’s experience isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.

Think for a moment about the examples of companies targeting ‘influencers’ via social media. Recently there was the ‘Pepsi 25′ program that was rolled out to myself and 24 other people in front of Pepsi’s new branding and logo. Around Christmas, there was the KMart sponsored post that Chris Brogan and a few other ‘influencers’ in the social media space participated in. And a few months ago, HP targeted top tech blogs in a laptop giveaway.
While we can think of many recent examples of companies reaching out to ‘influencers’ via social media and blogger ‘outreach’ programs, why are companies stopping there? Why aren’t companies using social media to target the RIGHT influencers?
Can you name a few recent examples of companies using social media to embrace, empower, and excite their customer evangelists?
Go ahead, I’ll wait. It isn’t easy to think of any good examples, is it? But it SHOULD be! Companies reaching out to their most passionate customers via social media SHOULD be a no-brainer. These are people that WANT to promote your company and that actively are DOING so! So why in the world wouldn’t more companies want to find their blogging/twittering/facebooking evangelists and reach out to them?
When I received my empty cans from Pepsi showing the history of the company’s branding, I honestly wasn’t overly impressed. I mean on one hand I appreciated the effort that Pepsi went to in sending these materials to me. Obviously they send the cans and promotional materials to myself and 24 other people because they thought we were ‘influential’ in the social media space, and that we would blog/twitter/podcast about this promotion, and hopefully in a favorable light.
Now the problem for me is, I know I’m not influential to Pepsi drinkers, cause I don’t drink Pepsi (Dr Pepper here. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?). But as I was shaking my head at all this fuss in trying to reach me because someone deemed me ‘influential’, I noticed a letter that came with the cans. It informed me that this was the new branding for Pepsi, and that I was one of 25 people in the world to be seeing the company’s new branding and new logo.
Think about that for a moment. Here, Pepsi had just spent a lot of money to put their new branding into the hands of…a Dr Pepper lover. But what if a true Pepsi evangelist had gotten that letter telling them that they were one of the first 25 people in the WORLD to see the new branding for a product that they loved and evangelized to others? It would have been an early Christmas for them. If they were active in social media, they would have broken their necks to get to their blog/twitter account/facebook profile ASAP and let the WORLD know what just had happened. Every person that they come in contact with would know imediately what the new Pepsi branding looked like, and they would likely be hearing about “OMG THIS IS SO COOL!!!!”
Because that’s what happens when you empower your fans to sing your praises. This is where companies should be investing their time if they want to reach ‘influential’ people. Focus on your most passionate customers that are active in social media, and reach out to them immediately. ‘Influential’ is fine, but influential and passionate about your company is what you want.

Recently GaryVee had a bit of a crisis situation on his hands. He has a site called Cork’d, which is a community site for wine lovers. The site was hacked, and worst of all, set up to re-direct to a porn site. And to make matters worse, Tech Crunch, arguably the most influential tech website on the planet, picked up on this and ran a post on it. Yikes!
Now let’s step back for a second and realize what has happened. One of Gary’s sites has been hacked, and not only hacked, but set to re-direct to a porn site. At this point, this is on the verge of becoming a full-blown disaster, but what Gary does next is the blueprint for how a company should handle an online crisis situation by using social media.
First, Gary understands that Tech Crunch is a massively influential and well-trafficked tech site, so he reads it daily. As a result, he saw the post about Cork’d getting hacked soon after it was published on Tech Crunch.
Second, he immediately set out to create a plan on dealing with this crisis. He left a response to the Tech Crunch post, but also left his response as a video comment. This allowed Gary to quickly address the situation, explain what had happened, why it happened, and that he was at fault. Tech Crunch readers immediately came to his defense and praised his response.
By quickly replying to the story, and in an honest and transparent tone, Gary immediately turned a potentially very negative situation into a positive experience. His response dictated the end result, as it always does in social media.
Gary also posted an excellent video recapping the day’s events, how he handled the situation, and what he learned. If you are interested in learning how social media can be used as a crisis management tool, this video is a must-view:

Key takeaways:

1 – Monitor social media channels. Gary was alerted to the problem with Cork’d because he reads Tech Crunch on a daily basis. He understands the power that Tech Crunch has in covering a space that’s important to his business.

2 – Use social media channels to respond. Gary immediately responded at the focal point, directly in the comments of the Tech Crunch story. He didn’t respond a day later because a reporter emailed him asking for a comment on the ‘Cork’d gets hacked Tech Crunch story’, he knew about the story shortly after it was posted, and addressed it quickly.
3 – Admit your mistakes. Gary admitted that the hack was partly because he hadn’t been paying as much attention to Cork’d as he wanted to. He came off to others as being someone that was humble and apologetic. When you are wrong, it’s best if YOU say it before everyone else does.
4 – Use social media to solve the problem. Because Gary is active on Twitter, he has a network of tens of thousands of friends that were willing to help him solve his problem. Gary reached out to them, and they quickly responded with help. Also notice that he was criticized by one user for not offering to pay, and another offered to solve his problem and added that his money was ‘no good’. Tara Hunt (@MissRogue), another ‘power’ Twitter user, also came to Gary’s defense.
5 – Build your Ark BEFORE it rains. Gary could lean on his community to help him through this crisis because he HAD a community. He had built up equity with these people for the past couple of years, and they were ready and willing to help him out.
One final thought. Notice that Tech Crunch went back and edited their original post to first add a link to Gary’s video comment, then to add the video above, which Gary posted on his website. Thanks to Gary being proactive, the very point where the crisis began, became a channel for Gary to not only diffuse the situation, but to build more equity by making a quick and proper response.
What did YOU learn from how Gary handled this?

Today, companies and individuals are rushing to this space, and it’s exciting to see. And as people discover this space, they are looking for people to give them guidance. Which is often where the trouble starts, because it’s where people start hearing about social media’s ‘rules’. They start hearing about the ‘right’ way to blog, or the ‘correct’ way to use Twitter.
What they are really hearing is someone take the way that THEY use these tools, and offer them as being the ONLY way to use these tools.
Here’s my rule: Don’t listen to these people.
I’ve left over 13,000 tweets on Twitter, and have been using it for almost 2 years. I can give you plenty of advice on how *I* use Twitter effectively. But is MY way the best for YOU? Maybe, maybe not. And for the record, the way I use Twitter has changed about 10 times in those 2 years, and continues to evolve.
In the aftermath of Dell Hell, the blogosphere insisting that Dell had to start blogging. Many of the ‘A-Lister’ bloggers called for Dell to launch a blog, and finally in 2006, they did. And many of those same bloggers that all but demanded that Dell start blogging, immediately slammed the company when their first blog launched. Dell had followed the ‘rules’, they had listened to bloggers, and bloggers immediately slapped them on the wrist for doing so. My friend Beth Harte blogged about how Motrin and Chris Brogan also ran into problems because they apparently violated the ‘rules’ of social media.
This worries me because I see new people flocking to Twitter in droves. And not just new people, but people that work for companies and agenices. People that are likely coming to Twitter in great part to learn more about social media. I fear these people will follow the ‘power’ users, and think that how they use Twitter is the ‘right’ way. Or that there is a ‘right’ way to blog.
Don’t confuse guidelines with rules. The great thing about social media is that the space is evolving and we are all learning together. Find your own path, then when you reach your destination, you can help teach the rest of us what you learned along the way.

We’ve all heard that there’s two sides to every story. But when it comes to social media, I think we can add a third side to the story. For example, companies that blog are often worried about how to handle a negative or abrasive comment from a reader.
But while the blogger has to consider how to respond to negative or attacking comment, they also have to consider that the blog’s other readers are watching to see how they handle the situation. When the smoke clears, the blogger might have their version of the exchange, the commenter has their version, and the readers see how both parties reacted, and come up with their own account of the exchange. This is why it’s so important for companies (and individuals) to keep their cool and respond sensibly to potential disagreements.
A more obvious example is Twitter. I will often see someone I am following arguing with someone else. But if I’m not following the person they are arguing with, I can only see one side of the conversation. So my opinion of the exchange is only based on seeing one-half of a conversation. Companies, as well as individuals need to keep in mind how others are viewing their interactions online.
Remember that when you are online, you may be directly communicating with one person, but you are indirectly communicating with everyone else.

1 – A strategy. Why are you blogging? What are you attempting to do with your blog? Establish your company as an industry leader? Boost your brand awareness? Provide customer service? Know what you want to accomplish with your blog, and make sure that your goals are consistent with your overall business strategy.
2 – A dedicated group of bloggers. If you only have one blogger, or if you have five, every blogger needs to know what is expected of them, and what their role is. If each blogger needs to write 2 posts a week, they have to be willing to give you 2 posts a week.
3 – A posting schedule. This ties in with #2. Ideally, a company blog should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is usually too much. Make sure each blogger knows how many posts a week/month they are responsible for, and have the posts up on a set pattern. Don’t have the bloggers put them up whenever inspiration strikes, that’s how you end up with 2 posts a week; one on Thursday night at 10:46pm, the other on Sunday at noon. Set up your posts to run in the middle of the week, and then move outward. Tues, Weds, and Thursday are usually the best days for traffic, so schedule posts to run these days, usually around 10am-noon.
4 – A comment policy. Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments. When Shelia leaves a comment at 3am Saturday morning, will it be noon on Monday till it’s approved? You need to know this. For extra credit, list it on the blog itself.
5 – An ‘About Us’ section. Tell me who you are, what you do, and how I can get in touch with you. Gotta have this. For extra credit, add a section explaining what your blog is about.

6 – Pictures and bios for EVERY blogger. Again, this is non-negotiable. I need to be able to SEE who every blogger is, and I need to know their background. Gotta have this.
7 – A blogroll with NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading. Sure you can add your website, but please mix in some non-company sites as well.
8 – RSS subscriber buttons. Give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, via a feed reader, or email. Feedburner can help you set up both, go to Feedburner.com and set yourself up a free account, if you haven’t already. A small section explaining what RSS is and the advantages of subscribing would be a nice touch as well.
9 – A section for Recent Comments. This isn’t a ‘must have’, but it’s a really nice way to put the focus on your readers, and it also gives them an idea of which posts are getting the most attention.
10 – A personal touch. Be human. Refer to commenters by name. Say ‘thank you’ early and often. Ask for feedback, and opinions. Remember that ultimately, people don’t want to connect with companies, we want to connect with people.
What did I miss? If your company blogs, what are some other elements that you believe are vital to your blogging efforts? Which of these are most important?

How many times have you heard that “people want to have relationships with companies/brands”‘? I say that’s complete BS. I have enough trouble with the relationships I have with real people, why would I want to add companies to the mix?!?
But many branding/marketing ‘experts’ are trying to sell companies on the idea that people want to have a ‘relationship’ with the companies that sell the products that they buy.
Do I want to have a relationship with Dell? Is that why my next laptop will be a Dell? Of course not. My next laptop will be a Dell because I have met and connected with so many members of Dell’s team. I have sat at a table and talked social media with John Pope and Amie Paxton. I’ve moderated a panel about corporate blogging that Lionel Menchaca sat on. And perhaps most importantly, Richard Binhammer has given me a ride back to my hotel after the taxi never showed up.
But spontaneous name-dropping aside, the REAL reason why my next laptop will be a Dell is because if I pull it out of the box and it doesn’t work, I know that all I have to do is go to Twitter and tweet that to Richard/John/Lionel/Amie/Chris/Natalie and one of them will get back to me within minutes to help me.
If I buy a Compaq/HP/Apple/Gateway/Toshiba laptop and it’s a brick out of the box, I have no idea who to contact about it. With Dell, I can think of at least 5 people that work there that I have either personally met, or talked on the phone with, or both, that would be tripping over each other to see who can help me first.
That’s big. In an era where the customer is demanding more than ever before from companies when it comes to service, social media has allowed Dell to get a huge leg up over their competitors. Social media has allowed Dell’s employees to connect with me, and that’s why they will get my future business.
The big question is, why aren’t Dell’s competitors using these same tools in the same way to let their employees connect with me?

At last week’s Digital Marketing Mixer, Gary Vaynerchuk had this interesting quote about companies not wanting to invest time in this space, during his keynote:

The problem is, these companies don’t want to work. I get it. I’m a consultant, I get it! You come in, you do this, you do that….they’d much rather give an agency $100,000 to run ads in the New York Post, commercials, pizza boxes, direct mail, and Stern radio ads, and they’re done, right? They’re clowns, don’t feel bad for them. Let them die!

Ah you gotta love GaryVee! But he’s right, many companies don’t want to invest time and energy into forging connections with their customers via social media. Many want to simply start up a blog or Facebook page, maybe give some free stuff to bloggers, and wait for the sales avalanche.
If your company wants to be successful in using social media, then here’s what you need to do; Use these tools in the same way your customers do, and for the same reasons.
Don’t have a firm or consultant set up a blog or Twitter account for you so you can broadcast. Take the time to invest in learning how your customers are using these tools, and more importantly, why. Spend time getting to know your customers and interacting with them.
Social media requires a long-term commitment. You can’t “buy” credibility in this space, you have to be here for the long-haul. Leave your wallet at the door, and invest the time it will take to build the connections to your customers. Take the time to give a damn about getting to know these people, and letting them get to know you.
That’s how you win with social media.

Last week in Scottsdale at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer, I was lucky enough to meet many people who are wanting to push blogging efforts forward at their businesses. What I noticed from the people that I talked to in my one-on-one sessions was that they mostly shared two qualities; They were very curious about blogging, and very scared by it as well. It was as if they felt that they had to do something, but they weren’t sure what that ’something’ was.
And I got to thinking about that, and I realized that in a few years, these people and the companies that they work for will probably be the ones that we look back and view as being the brave ones that dove into the blogging waters. It would be so easy for these companies to say that they don’t understand blogging, and thusly dismiss it. But they knew that something so big was happening that the fear of being left behind, overcame their fear of the unknown.
On a personal level, these discussions might have been the most rewarding to me. So many of the sessions started with the frustration-tinged admission that “I don’t know what to do!” But in reality, I think most people know more about blogging than they realize. I remember telling someone the importance of going and commenting on other blogs, especially when a blogger leaves a comment on your blog. The woman thought for a second, then added, “So what you’re saying is….I should go back to their blog after they comment on my blog, and say what….’Thank You?’ ” I clarified that it was all she had to do, and reminded her that she “shouldn’t overthink this.” At one point I told one woman that “You CAN do this!” and watched as a smile and a look of relief seemed to wash over her.
You, like the good people I was lucky enough to meet at the Digital Marketing Mixer, can do this. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

But by focusing on trying to define what is and is not social media, are we really doing a disservice to companies that are curious about these tools? Is it more important that they understand what tools fall into the ‘current’ social media bucket, or how and why using those tools are important?
I vote for the latter. I don’t care if you want to call podcasting ’social media’, or ‘goat cheese from Nantucket’, I just care about what it does, and whether it can help businesses grow and better reach their customers. The label isn’t important to me, what the tool DOES and how it can be used to BENEFIT a company is what I am interested in knowing.
And last night on Twitter, I heard a new term ‘microsharing’. Now granted, ‘microsharing’ might be a better term than ‘microblogging’–or maybe it isn’t.
But I think we are short-changing the advancement of this entire space when we get hung up on something like labels. Tomato or tomato? Who cares? Is it more important to come up with THE ‘accepted’ definition for ’social media’ (until someone moves the goalpost in a month and comes up with a better one), or is it more important to help Company A better understand how ONE of these tools can better help it reach and communicate with its customers?
I say let’s worry less about naming the tools, and more about making sure that companies understand how and why they should be using them.

First, a study released earlier this month by Forrester Research showed that B2B blogging growth slowed dramatically in 2007. After tracking 36 new B2B blogging companies in 2006, the research firm noted only 19 new ones in 2007.
Then earlier this week, a study by Burson-Marsteller found that 15% of the current Fortune 500 companies are blogging. The study claims this is 270% increase since late 2005, which is really a red herring, as three years in the corporate blogging landscape is a lifetime.
But I think a couple of takeaways from these two studies shed a bit of light into why many companies are cautious about blogging, and why many of the ones that are blogging, aren’t doing a very good job.
First, from the Forrester study:

B2B marketers should embrace strategies prominently used by mainstream bloggers to attract readers, build conversations, and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers, the report’s author advises…As a result, 74% of B2B blogs receive a minimum of commentary or trackbacks because readers fail to find conversations worthy of their involvement.
Successful blogging, Forrester insists, is not a one-way street, but most corporate bloggers yak away about their companies and products, seemingly oblivious to whether their audience is listening or not.
Similar to last year, 56% of blogs we examined simply regurgitate company news or executive views

And this one from the Burson-Marsteller study:

“[The surveyed blogs] are primarily for external communications, but there may be internal blogs that wouldn’t show up within this report because this only [represents] blogs that we can find with relative ease,” said Erin Byrne, Burson chief digital strategist. “When I thought about it, I thought that the number would have been higher, and I think the reason–why it still isn’t higher is that companies are still grappling with how they participate in the conversation when they don’t have control over the message.”

I think the problem is that many companies are still trying to position their blogs as vehicles to directly promote themselves, instead of as vehicles to create valuable content for their readers. The end result is that many blogs end up being little more than websites with comments. I am constantly spending time on business blogs, and there are two qualities that most have in common:
1 – The content is very heavy on self-promotion
2 – The posts get little or no comments
Basically, these companies are sitting back and waiting for readers to flock to their blogs so they can promote themselves to them. I think we all know how well this works.
On the flipside, the truly great blogging companies position their blogs a bit differently:
1 – The content is very heavy on promoting topics that are important to their customers. Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line blog has almost no direct promotion of the company’s products. Instead, the blog focuses on stories and news items that would appeal to its environmentally-conscious customers.
2 – They interact with readers that leave comments. On Mahindra’s Life of a Farm blog, Joel does a great job of responding to readers, which not only helps conversations build, but encourages readers to comment again in the future.
3 – Many of them are active on other social sites and blogs. Dell’s blog is often held up as an example of a solid company blog. But many people don’t consider all the time that many Dell employees spend interacting with customers on other sites such as Twitter and Friendfeed, and of course, responding to other bloggers on their blogs. This only enhances the value of the company’s blog, and the value that Dell receives from having a social media strategy, as opposed to just a blogging strategy.
My guess is that moving forward, more companies will become more open with their blogs and their efforts will improve. But at this point I don’t think studies such as these are an indictment of business blogging, but rather BAD business blogging.

First, Ford last month tabbed social media guru (and fellow Daily Fix writer) Scott Monty to head up its social media efforts. Scott will be over a 5-person social media team for Ford Motor Company.
Second, Dell recently announced that it was giving its employees unfettered access to a wide array of social media sites and social tools.
Dell’s Chief Blogger, Lionel Menchaca, explains the company’s rationale for the move:

This latest development is an evolution of our social media strategy, and I think it’s a good thing. In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the early days of the Internet. The objections for not opening up access to social media sites borrows a popular argument from back then: doing so will be a drain on employee productivity. So, why did we do it? Because more of our global customer base is having conversations on these sites. Beyond that, many customers reach out to Dell for support at these sites. Seems clear that these trends will continue.

And finally, on Monday, Geoff Livingston announced that his Washington D.C.-based Livingston Communications was being acquired by Toronto’s Social Media Group. The move makes SMG the largest indie SM marketing firm in North America, with Livingston adding that “it’s clear that companies are desperate for qualified social media marketing and communications services creating an immediate opportunity to serve large enterprises.”(emphasis added).
I see a couple of trends here. Some companies are deciding it’s time to get serious about social media, and are creating social media management/director positions. While other companies are still outsourcing their social media initiatives to marketing/social media firms. And companies such as Dell that have been experimenting with and using social media for a while now, are seeing clear benefits and are actively embracing these tools on a company-wide basis.
I also think that the big advantage that companies like Dell have is that their entire culture is being changed by social media. Another company can swoop in and hire a ’social media expert’ to head up their new social media department, but will the rest of the company be behind these tools, or just a few people in upper management?
Either way, I think you’re going to see a lot more names on the move sooner rather than later.

For all the (deserved) criticism that myself and many others have heaped on Twitter recently, the site still excels as a professional networking tool. And nowhere can you see this more clearly when you begin using the tool to connect with fellow conference-goers. And not just during the event, but before and after, as well.
I really began to appreciate the power of Twitter during this year’s SXSW. Everyone was using the site to plan our meetings. In fact at one point, my phone went out on my and I asked everyone on Twitter to please email me if they were trying to reach me. No one emailed, they all sent direct messages via Twitter!
Then in April I attended the first Small Business Marketing Unleashed. Again, Twitter was invaluable as a networking tool during the event, and after. I’ll be again speaking at the next SBMU in September, and what I am noticing is that I am already connecting on Twitter with people that have registered to attend. So it’s almost like I will know half the attendees from Twitter, before I even arrive! And the same thing is happening with the next Marketing Profs conf in Oct. I’m already connecting with people that are planning on attending the conference.
And it’s becoming even easier to connect and network via Twitter thanks to the following sites:
Twellow – Organizes users according to dozens of different careers/topics
TwitterLocal – Helps you find Twitterers in your local area
TwitterPacks – This is similar to Twellow, helps you find Twitter users organized by subject, you can add yourself
Summize – Probably the most reliable general search for Twitter
So despite all its many downtime issues, Twitter is still the best online tool I have found for networking. And if you are planning on attending a conference, it’s a wonderful way to connect and network with fellow attendees before, during, and after the event!

Here’s where it gets interesting.

First, Dooce blogged that she loved the Wii Fit, and that Nintendo
wasn’t paying her to blog about the product, or to give 5 sets away to
her reader. She explains that:

I get approached to do
things like this all the time, but this is the first time I’ve done a
give away because this is a product I use, something in my house,
something I’d love to share with you. Nintendo is not paying me to do
this, and just to clear up some confusion, I would never accept money
to post about anything here. That’s not how this website works.
Everything you see in my style section is something I have bought with
my own money or is a gift sent to me from one of my readers, a gift I
would have gone out and bought had I known about it beforehand,
something that fits right in with my aesthetic. I work very hard to
make sure that you can trust that what I say here is in no way
influenced by advertisers or corporations who are trying to reach a
bunch of eyeballs. Your eyeballs deserve as much.

She then announced that she would pick the winners at random from among
those that left a comment to that post.  The contest would run for 2
days, at which time the comments to the post would be turned off.

When the smoke cleared, 42,232 comments were left for that one post. 

Now
I’m trying to wrap my mind around what exactly the ROI is for this idea
of Nintendo’s.  The ‘retail’ cost of the 5 sets of Wiis and Wii Fits
they gave Dooce is around $1,800.00.  In exchange, they got an product
endorsement from one of the most influential bloggers on the planet,
resulting in 42,000 comments.  And the post itself has been linked to by another 40+ blogs,
so there’s that extra exposure.  And we know that the post was viewed
at least 42,000 times, odds are that it was viewed a minimum of a few
hundred thousand times.

All for a likely actual cost
to Nintendo of around $1,000.00.  In exchange, Nintendo got a post from
one of the most popular bloggers on the planet, gushing about its
product.  And oh yeah, the 42,000 comments.

Good or bad move for Nintendo?

Earlier this year, I would normally use Twitter during the morning to share links as I went through my feeds. If I found something interesting, I’d share it with my followers. Then at night, I would get on Twitter and use it as a time to interact with others and join in on conversations.
But as constant downtimes have plagued Twitter, I’m finding that the conversations and interaction have all but disappeared. I think this is partly due to many people simply spending time on other sites. But I think the bigger reason is, many people don’t want to try to use Twitter as a place to converse, if the site is going to go down just as an interesting conversation gets started.
Case in point, this morning I spent some time sharing links from my feeds. Then I decided that I wanted to ask my Twitter followers a question, in order to get their feedback. As I was typing out the tweet (in Twhirl), the dreaded ‘limit exceeded’ warning flashed up. So my attempt at sparking a conversation had been nixed before I could even write the tweet.
Then, as I sat in a Twitter-induced timeout, I started looking at the tweets that had been coming through my Twitterstream. At least half were simply people sharing links. Most of the remaining ones were the ‘what are you doing now?’ type of updates. Very few people appeared to actually be engaged in conversation, or even making the attempt.
And that’s a shame, because when Twitter is working, it holds so much promise as a true ’social’ media tool. But for now, it seems that many of us are having to use Twitter to broadcast one-way messages and links. The conversations appear to have moved elsewhere, and unless Twitter can start spending that VC money to fix its problems, its users may follow.

Problem is, they all seem to be ignoring another site that’s growing even faster than Friendfeed.
As this Google Trends graph shows, Plurk’s traffic level has consistently been higher than Friendfeed’s for the month of June:

So why the disconnect? How is it that even with the ‘endorsement’ of seemingly every A-List blogger, Friendfeed still can’t catch Plurk?
Now to be fair, I can see how Friendfeed could have a lot of utility for a lot of people. I am trying to use it more simply because a lot of the people I follow ARE moving there.
But from what I can tell, more of the people I follow are going to Plurk. I’ve seen the case being made that Friendfeed is great to have robust conversations come out of nowhere. But whereas a Friendfeed thread with over 100 replies is a true rarity, threads on Plurk get that many replies in 15 mins. This one from Sunday night got over 600 replies in 90 mins. Yes, you read that right.
So while the ‘big boys’ keep ignoring Plurk, I’ll be over in Plurkistan having a blast!

This has always been somewhat of an issue with blogs, where some bloggers have a less than stellar reputation for encouraging and replying to comments from their readers. Seth Godin has a well-known “no-comment” policy on his blog (but Seth does at least quickly reply to emails).
But I’m really noticing a lack of interaction by some social media “experts” on Twitter. It seems you only see these people a couple of times a week, and that’s always to leave a “My latest post is up, here’s the link…” tweet. Of course if you try to reply and engage the person concerning the post, it falls on deaf ears as they are already long gone, just stopping by Twitter long enough to broadcast the availability of their latest post.
Now to be honest, this is entirely their right to treat some social sites as places for one-way communication. None of my business. The problem I have is that when companies come to these ’social media experts’ and ask for help on better understanding Twitter, what do you think is likely going to happen?
That’s right, they are going to be happy to show these companies how to use Twitter. And I’m betting it will be in a way that’s very similar to the way they use Twitter.
If you are using social sites and tools as one-way channels to promote your content, you aren’t practicing social media, you are in broadcast media.

Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, you must begin monitoring existing conversations about your company. This has several advantages:
1 – It lets you be proactive in responding to complaints from customers. Want to impress a customer that’s blogged about a problem they are having with your product? Leave a comment 15 mins after their post goes up, then follow up with an email attempting to help them with their problem.
2 – It helps create evangelists for your brand. See above. Often people that are complaining about your product can be converted into evangelists if you are proactive and sincere in your attempts to deal with their complaints.
3 – It increases your brand equity. By actively monitoring the blogosphere and other social sites, your company can develop a reputation of reaching out to and helping customers. Comcast is a great example of a company using Twitter to monitor conversations and provide customer service.
4 – It makes you more familiar with social media tools and sites. Once you begin monitoring the blogosphere, you’ll begin to better understand how ideas spread in this space, and how blogs work. Same thing with monitoring talk on Twitter, it helps you better understand that space, and how your customers are using the site.
So before you start a social media strategy, lay the groundwork by putting tools in place that let you properly monitor these tools and sites so that you know what current and potential customers are saying about you. Some tools that you’ll want to look into include Google Blog Search, Summize, TweetScan(Twitter), Technorati, and Plurk Lurker.
Bonus link, how to use these monitoring tools to Launch a Successful Blogger Outreach Program in One Day.

Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku all offer a somewhat similar layout and functionality, and are more or less aimed at the same crowd. But Plurk is the clear maverick of the micro-blogging camp. It has a funky UI that almost everyone instantly hates. It’s supposedly aimed at teens. It has headless animals for mascots and lets you add dancing bananas and dozens of other emoticons in your plurks (messages left on Plurk).
But whether you love or hate Plurk (and there’s little wiggle-room), the key takeaway for me is that Plurk has kept the 140-ish character backbone of other micro-blogging sites, but added its own distinctive look and feel. And it’s aiming itself at teens (and adults that like to occasionally act like teens!). Plurk has opened the door for the next entrant in this space to target a specific market with a unique layout and functionality.
Which I think goes a long way toward validating the micro-blogging space as a whole. Many people are predictably trying to decide who ‘wins’; Twitter or Plurk. In this case, I think they both do. Plurk has a unique look and feel that sets is apart from the rest of the micro-blogging crowd. And Plurk’s growth will help expand the possibilities and awareness of the micro-blogging space, which brings more exposure to Twitter, as the dominant player in this space.
As with almost everything else in social media right now, I can’t wait to see what comes next! Will we see more competitors in this space emerge that are focused on niche markets with functionality and a UI that’s tailored to its target audience? I believe we will, and if we do, we can thank Plurk for holding the door open to what’s possible in the micro-blogging space.
BTW if you are new to Plurk and confused as hell over how to navigate the site, I created a sort of primer on Plurk over at The Viral Garden that you might want to check out.

Many of us tried out Plurk, and came away with mixed results. That’s not what impressed me. What impressed me was how quickly the “what is Plurk?” question traveled throughout the hyper-connected Twitter network.
Everyone wanted to check out Plurk, because everyone else was talking about it. And again, most people were tweeting that they didn’t really understand what the deal was with Plurk, or what value it had. Didn’t matter, as everyone was blabberin’ on about Plurk, so everyone had to see what the deal was.
And it was a great example of how quickly ideas can spread, especially through well-connected networks. My guess is that if you weren’t on Twitter on Sunday, you probably didn’t hear much, if any, talk about Plurk. But if you were on Twitter, it seemed to be all anyone was talking about.
Then again, perhaps the most interesting aspect was that by day’s end, many people were spreading an idea simply because everyone else was. Many people have lamented about the ‘echo chamber’ that exists in the blogosphere, and how we early adopters of social media sites/tools tend to over-hype any new sites or tools that pop up. It appears that was definitely a factor in driving everyone to Plurk.com.
Still, any business that wants to integrate social media into its business processes, needs to understand how easily ideas, and hype around those ideas, can spread in this space.

Here’s what Jennifer said about the software program, Baby Insights:

I
don’t know about you, but the last time a family member had the gall to
ask me “what did you do all day” they got a talking to that made it
clear they were never, ever EVER to ask that question again. At least
not until our children were old enough to have children of their own.

Besides, when was the last time your friends and family members sat
down with you so that you could “proudly and confidently” show them
just how much time you spent feeding your baby in the last few days?

Am I the only one that wonders if this is a gag?

Understandably, Aruni was in a state of almost panic upon seeing
this. But what Aruni, and Jennifer did next, is a great lesson for
companies that want to interact with and respond to bloggers.

First, Aruni didn’t get defensive and lash out at Jennifer. That
would have made a potentially bad situation a four-alarm disaster.
Instead, she contacted Connie Reece at Every Dot Connects, who was
handling her PR, to seek Connie’s advice. Connie explains that

To
her credit, Aruni not only asked for advice, she followed it. She did
not respond in anger, but did her homework and learned something about
Jennifer, her blog, and her readers. When Aruni did add a comment to
The Lactivist, it was well received. She and Jennifer also exchanged
e-mails, establishing the basis for a relationship.

Aruni left a comment to Jennifer’s post
and graciously accepted the feedback from Jennifer and her readers, and
calmly stated her reasoning for creating the product. That was the
perfect response as it made Aruni look like she was confident in her
product.

But also notice how Jennifer reacted. In the comments section, while
some of her community agreed with her on the product’s potential
utility, some thought she was being too hard on the software, and added
that they could see themselves using it.

Jennifer eventually added in the comments:

While I
could still never imagine using a program like that myself, my readers
have really given some great reasons why it’s still a useful programs
for some moms….That’s the great thing about this blog. If I go on a
rant without thinking something through from all angles, my readers
aren’t afraid to call me on it.

Two big lessons here for companies:

1 – Even if a blogger slams you, how you respond is STILL more important. Aruni’s response determined the positive outcome.

2 – Bloggers are usually pretty reasonable people. Even though my good friend Jennifer
came out pretty hard on Baby Insights, she was reasonable enough to see
that some of her readers definitely disagreed with her opinions of the
software.

A bad product review from a popular blogger isn’t always the end of
the world. In fact if you keep your wits about you, it can actually be
the start of a friendship. As Connie adds:

Several
months later Aruni started her own blog, entrepreMusings, and she and
Jennifer follow each other on Twitter now. And to show what a small
world it is, I had dinner with Jennifer last month at BloggerSocial08
in New York. We shared a laugh over how the situation had unfolded and
how the former critic had become an ally.

BTW this episode is better explained in a great case study that Every Dot Connects just released.

And these constant problems are what we need to talk about. Many of us understand why Twitter is down. We get that the site is trying to meet demand and is having trouble scaling. But what many of us do NOT understand is why Twitter is keeping us in the dark about the process.
So here’s my request to the good people at Twitter: Start actually using the service.
Think of how many Dell reps are on Twitter. You can’t swing a bad pitch without hitting one. But where are the Twitter employees using the service as we do? What would happen if just 2 people from Twitter were on the site evangelizing and engaging Twitter users? GeekMommy said it best:

But I’m still of the opinion that they really need a community representative whose sole job is to interact with the Twitter community and make sure things like yesterday’s outages and issues are understood.
Twitter is a great service & their people work hard – but it doesn’t come across that way when there’s nothing but static on the airwaves.

Here’s a BIG secret for businesses that deal with negative comments by users/customers online; most of that negativity comes from the fact that we think that you aren’t valuing or listening to what we have to say. Start actually engaging us, and the volume of negativity will go WAY down.
Just ask Dell.
So that’s my advice to Twitter. Take a few bucks from those millions you’ve just raised on funding, and hire a community evangelist that will help bring the voice of the community back to Twitter, and vice-versa. Or if you don’t want to do that, there are MANY Twitterers that would volunteer to be the voice of the community for you. Here’s one.
So Twitter, don’t be afraid to reach out to us. While we complain when you are down, we love the service and really want to see it do well. But we can’t tell you that if you won’t listen.
Twitter users, what say you? Would you feel better about the constant problems if Twitter was active in the space and giving us feedback and support? Or should we all shut up and take it, since it’s a free service?

Geoff Livingston blogged that: “I don’t feel bad for reporters and A-List bloggers who get this kind of attention. It’s part of the job and/or results of tremendous success. Get over it.”
Jason Falls goes further, saying that maybe it’s time to turn the tables and start blacklisting bloggers: “My suggestion is that by declaring these media members or bloggers unfit for pitching, they are the ones who will ultimately pay the price as they cut their audiences off from the world of valuable information public relations professionals provide them.”
Rick adds: “What Brian says is true but it is also wrong and shame on bloggers who hold PR professionals to an unreasonable standard. Show me a blogger who hasn’t posted inaccurate information one time or another or flamed someone and later had to apologize for it and I will eat my hat. We all make mistakes.”
Couple of points here:
1 – It seems that most people are overlooking the reason that Gina states for creating the ‘blacklist’, which she states as : “This wiki was put together by Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker.com, who welcomes blog pitches to the tips at lifehacker.com email address, which exists for that purpose. She has also always respectfully requested that no press releases get sent to her personal email address in the one place where it is published online. The press releases, however, keep arriving. At her personal email address. Which is why she filters these companies.”
And sure enough, on her personal website, right under her personal email address, she adds: “Please, no press releases or Lifehacker story pitches to my personal email address. ” So if Gina is, as she claims, getting unsolicited pitches from these PR firms via her personal email, then they are apparently purposely ignoring her requests to not have pitches sent to her personal address. That’s a lil more serious than a ’simple mistake’ in my book.
2 – All this chatter over ‘You’re blacklisting me? Oh YEAH? Well I’m blacklisting YOU!’ is overlooking the main point; that almost all PR pitches (at least the ones I get) are still VERY VERY BAD. And this hasn’t gotten a bit better in the 3 years I have been blogging. I can only imagine how many bad pitches a site like Lifehacker has to deal with every single day.
And I think that’s the key issue here. We can argue over who should or should not be blacklisting who all we want. But I think we’d all be a lot better served if we could deal with the real problem; why do most pitches to bloggers from PR firms still suck as badly today as they did in 2005?