The panel on new marketing case studies included:
- Matt Podboy, founder & client supervisor, Voce Communications - MODERATOR
- Dave Parmet, Parmet.net for English Cut
- DL Byron, Principal, Textura Design
- Daniele Levy, Vice-President Marketing, Peerflix
Byron: Consulted with Boeing on Randy's journal & Testflight blog.
Randy's journal was first criticized as a psuedoblog. The designer got 'the blog call'. Airbus was about to launch and Boeing wanted the attention back on them. When they launched it: didn't have rss, no comments Ripped apart in the blogosphere.
We made it more blog like. Turned it around in 2 weeks. Blogosphere can be forgiving. Boeing responded nimbly and got good media pick up.
Who's going to buy a plane via the blog? No one. It's a brand extension. "We're smart." Boeing takes comments in & moderates them. Takes a sample and responds to them.
Don't run live commenting on Clip N Seal blog. We're able to bust through the clutter in Google. Our fear was that we didn't want people coming in from some other company (Pfizer) and they are reading about penis enlargement via comment spam. We don't run comments for that reason.
We moderate comments on the Business Blogging Summit site. Does drop off sponteneity of discussion.
Redesigning ClipNSeal now. NASA called up Clip N Seal because they read it up on the blog. We're able to get up in Google and get visibility. All we ever do is blog & that works.
Comment strategy has to be what is best for the business.
We talked to all these guys in the ski industry, and they were scared of what people would say. You have to engage it head on. Go straight into the flamer. If you acknowledge your critics, they turn into some of your best fans. You take it head on. You'll be criticized anyway.
Levy: Peerflix is a p2p trading platform for media. Peerblog gives us a way to have our own
voice & particpate in the discussion. Talk to current customers. Investors & people in the tech community. We have to reconcile all the different audiences. We chose to allow comments, and have them moderated. We try to respond to every comment. Sometimes in private, sometimes on the blog.
Announcements aren't new. Letting people comment & reply is what is new in corporate communications.
Podboy: blogging is self correcting. Lunatic flamers will get called out.
Levy: We see our blog being a long-term customer loyalty thing. Becomes something that peole come to consistently.
Parmet: Blogs are about telling stories. English Cut used comments to investigate potential for new markets. Asked if people in San Francisco were interested in having Mahon visit, and he has 40 customers here now. Also generated a heated discussion about developing a ready to wear line.
Asking people about the shirts also -- used blog to develop the future of the business.
You can't view the blog purely as a sales mechanism. Stormhoek used blogs to generate chit chat. It elevates your brand, your standing within that community. Thomas has gone from just another tailor to being the go-to guy for US & UK fashion media for Saville Row.
Byron: A post sells more than an ad or a NY times mention. We had a big NYTimes piece which produced a blip on the sales radar. Blog posts on Gizmodo, Cool Tools, 37signals, boing boing -- we got crushed with sales. I have no makreting budget. It's me blogging.
The biggest jump of sales was from a Boing Boing mention.
Podboy: gives you so much more visiblity into the organziation, the ideas and the topics you can cover. You can't write a release or a letter to the editor about a lot of these things.
Byron: Google loves blogs because of links. Links in/links out. How much linking is going into this site. How much out? How frequently is it being updated? How long has it been around. Don't think you're smarter than Google. They get the link blog thing. They know about pagerank gaming.
Parmet: Google likes relevant content.
Byron: I don't do any SEO. I thought of starting a firm called " NO SEO."
Hey! Thanks for this post. It confirms I was still lucid after all the claritin I took.
Posted by: DL Byron | March 06, 2006 at 03:30 PM