It is ridiculous how often reading Seth Godin’s blog just immediately clarifies an issue I have had trouble clarifying in my own mind and then explaining to others. This one resonates with me in a profound way this week.

I don’t know French. I can’t play the piano. I have no clue how to catch a bony spinefish. This is the first kind of don’t know. Stuff you don’t know because you haven’t been taught it yet. Books are awfully good at solving this problem, so are good teachers.

The second kind of ‘don’t know’ is often confused with the first type, but it’s really quite different. This is the person who says they don’t know how to cook, or that they can’t balance a checkbook. This isn’t about technique or a lack of knowledge. It’s usually either fear or lack of interest. People with this type of deficit won’t find the answer in a book or (usually) in a seminar either. You don’t learn how to cook from a cookbook.

The answer lies in trial and error and motivation and in overcoming the fear that makes us avoid the topic in the first place.

And why should a marketer care?

You need to care because if you try to solve the second kind of ignorance with a manual or a PDF or a blog post or even a long infomercial, you’re going to fail. If you discover that users are afraid or resistant to what you’re trying to get them to do, more information is almost always the incorrect response. The effective technique involves peer pressure and support and in changing the design and inputs of what you’re doing so that this group is more receptive to what’s on offer. For example, internet penetration isn’t up by a factor of 20 because people read a lot of copies of Internet for Dummies. It happened because of what peers said to each other over time, and because the act of getting online is a lot easier than it used to be. And you can help that happen.

Change is hard, but it is also exciting, challenging, and ultimately rewarding.

Just returned from 2 days at Morgo up in the beautiful Bay of Islands of New Zealand. It is invitation only, and the deal is that everything that is said there is considered confidential. This means that you get some unbelievable frank and honest presentations and insights into other people’s businesses. It is very refreshing when so many events are just full presentations that are really thinly veiled sales pitches.

The other reason I love Morgo is that you get a chance to spend some time with some really great people. I first met Sam Morgan in 2001, and hasn’t really changed at all since becoming a gazzillionaire. I met Rowan Simpson who was at TradeMe and is now at Xero with Rod Drury. I think these guys and others in the industry in Wellington have done a great job of developing a community of people who can work together on launching different online businesses, and I anticipate many, many more will follow. Mike Cannon-Brookes has co-founded and built, Atlassian, Australia’s largest software exporter in just 5 years…oh and he’s only 27. The Ryan brothers who have eurekster and SLI Systems. Then there are the enterprise software and technology guys selling into the US market like Ian McCrae from Orion Health, and Selwyn Pellett from Endace, the first New Zealand company to list on the AIM share market in the UK.

So it was quite daunting to have to run a workshop on Internet Marketing with an audience of extremely experienced entrepreneurs. Luckily I had some help from Andy Lark. Thanks to Andy and everyone who came along, and I hope you got some value from it. If you would like a copy of either of the presentations, please let me know.

Thanks to Jenny and all the other organisers for inviting me again and for putting on such a great event. It was a great honour to have a chance to present at such an amazing event.

More posts about Morgo:

Morgo 2007 - Thoughts on the way home
Mike from Atlassian
Morgo - going global from NZ

Technorati Tags: morgo

I’m at Gotham Hall in New York City attending the Future of Online Advertising conference. I’m going to post summaries of presentations and thoughts throughout the two days. Posts are going up on the Marker Blog.

Technorati Tags: fooa07nyc

Microsoft is going to buy aQuantive for $6 billion USD. aQuantive are the parent company for the largest digital/interactive agency in the world, Avenue A | Razorfish, as well as advertising technologies Atlas and Drive Performance Media.

This is big news. I know that Microsoft use Avenue A | Razorfish for all their interactive campaigns and work, so there is obviously a long term relationship.

Read the full article on cnet.

Well, it isn’t really the question for me as my business is largely about selling our clients on the benefits of business blogs or at least actively engaging the blogging community.

I still encounter resistance on almost a daily basis though. Here are the frequently asked questions and concerns that get posed to me when recommending a blog strategy:

What if a staff member posts something on the blog that is commercially sensitive?

A valid concern, however, what happens if a staff member sent something commercially sensitive by email? Are you going to monitor and read every single message they send out? Many, many people are unaware of the intensely insecure nature of email. Standard email messages are completely unencrypted and exceptionally easy to intercept. A single email message will generally get copied into log files on numerous mail servers around the world. The little button in Outlook that lets you recall a message, is essentially a ruse. You can’t actually recall or delete an email after it is sent.

My point? You have to trust your staff to be sensible the same way you trust them with a host of other mediums that can be used to communicate with the world. You can always have an internal blog or wiki if it is to be used for highly sensitive information, that’s what we do.

What if nobody posts anything?

You need to sell blogging to the people whom you want to be involved in the company and have some champions who will lead the way. One thing I noticed is that the guys in my team would send interesting links and information they had found to the all staff email list. I always just reply and tell them to blog it instead. I think all companies will be pleasantly surprised at the depth and breadth of knowledge available within their people. To be able to easily harness and share this knowledge is so incredibly powerful.

What is someone posts a critical comment?

This requires a complete shift in corporate thinking. Traditionally companies would shy away from publicly embarrassing issues and retain expensive PR spin doctors to deal with issues like this. I’ve previously posted about how Dell, in the face of growing customer dissatisfaction and criticism from the media, has embraced blogs and other Web 2.0 initiatives to try and create a far greater level of transparency with their market. There’s is an excellent case study of how conversations and dialogue are better than dealing with criticism in media that you have no control over. If you read my post on CEO blogs, I conclude that the most important thing is to deal with the comments and keep your blog active rather than shy away from it if things are going the way you want. Charles Dunstone at The Carphone Warehouse learnt that the hard way.

Another example, is low cost operator Southwest Airlines in the US, who currently have an unassigned seating policy on their flights. They posted on their blog that they were thinking of moving to assigned seating. They were overwhelmed with comments in response from their customers. The verdict was undeniably that this would be a “New Coke” scale tragedy if they were to proceed. All this within a matter of hours.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, blogging in the business environment, especially if you are the technology or communications business, should be a part of your marcomms strategy. If you are targeting the US market, then you should take this even more seriously. If you look at the number of Fortune 500 tech companies with blog strategies, the list is long and distinguished.

Technorati Tags: blogs, cgm, consumer generated media

Wrong! Take a look at this campaign by Intuit the company that creates Quicken and Tax Turbo software. It doesn’t get more dull than accounting and tax software, but they have come up with a very interesting campaign.

Do you recognise this guy?

That’s right, they’ve brought Vanilla Ice out of retirement. Ice, Ice baby.

Andy Lark has just posted that Rupert Murdoch told the Digital Hollywood conference in New York last week about MySpace:

“It’s extraordinary, the advertising has gone from basically nothing to, on a net basis, $25 million a month and growing every month - almost 30 per cent every quarter,”

He added:

“Next year we’ll be kicking in with search revenue from Google so together with IGN, we’ll be getting close to a billion dollars of revenue.”

MySpace is huge, you have to be looking at this as a marketing option, especially if you are targeting the 15-25 demographic.

Technorati Tags: myspace

Corporate blogging in general has not been that strong in the UK market. I believe that that there is still a feeling that blogs are for Americans. It is not exactly quintessentially English to tell the world about what you are thinking.

Charles Dunstone is the CEO of The Carphone Warehouse and started a blog after they acquired a broadband operator and launched the TalkTalk free broadband service. He was considered a pioneer in the marketplace at the time.

TalkTalk ran into problems with provisioning and customer service a few months ago, and Dunstone stopped blogging for over 2 months. He has received a lot of negative feedback about this and posted again on the 13th November apologising for the long absence.

Critics of blogs will be arguing that this is what happens if you are too transparent, and that blogs open you up to scrutiny that you might otherwise avoid. I believe that the error was in not continuing to blog through the crisis. If he had been able to continue the dialogue and explain to customers what they were doing to resolve the issues in a personal, human way, it may have helped with their public relations nightmare.

Dell used their blog extensively through the battery recall and by encouraging comments, they were able to follow up directly with the customer and try to find a way to resolve their concerns. Even sharing this information with the world shows that Dell was trying their best to deal with a difficult situation. Here is an example comment and response:

Michael Mace said:
I know you didn’t create the battery problem, but your handling of it worries me. Here’s my experience so far:

–I went to the battery recall site several weeks ago, entered my battery’s information very carefully, and the system told me I did not need a replacement.

–Tonight after receiving your additional notice, I entered the information again and now it says I do need a recall. I know you say you haven’t changed the batteries recalled, but I think you have.

If you change the criteria for the recall, you should say so very clearly. Others who had checked with the site previously may not bother to re-check.

I tried to reply about this to your e-mail, but the reply bounced. Apparently you sent the message from an address that doesn’t accept replies — even though you didn’t say so in the e-mail message, and you did say in the message that people should contact you if they have any questions.

This is a level of sloppiness I don’t expect from Dell.

So I hunted down this weblog — it’s the only electronic forum I could find for giving you feedback (I don’t want to invest the time in calling you).

That’s my two cents.
October 18, 2006 10:56 PM

Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager said:
Michael: Thanks for the comments. My apologies for not following up. I can tell you that we did not change the criteria for the recall. We simply received updated information from Sony in terms of the number of batteries shipped.

In terms of your specific battery, do you still need to get a replacement battery lined up?
October 18, 2006 10:56 PM

In this example, Lionel from Dell was able to clear up a misunderstanding immediately that they had changed the criteria for the recall, when in fact they had not. It has to be better to know what your customers are thinking rather than trying to avoid the issue. Nearly every business deals with major product recalls or similar public relations issues from time to time and I believe that it is how the company handles the situation, which will have the most impact on the future perceptions of the brand. A blog is an excellent tool for maintaining direct contact with affected customers and giving them comfort that they are doing everything possible.

40 of the Fortune 500 corporations in the US are now blogging. This is up from 24 just six months ago so is definitely on the rise. Whilst tech companies dominate, there are a guys like Boeing and General Motors doing it.

Amazon.com Inc.
Avaya Inc.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Dell, Inc
Electronic Data Systems
Ford Motor Company
General Motors Corporation
Hewlett-Packard Company
International Business Machines
Microsoft Corporation
Motorola Inc
Oracle Corporation
Sprint
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Texas Instruments
The Boeing Company
Time Warner Inc.
Viacom International Inc

The updated list and links are available as a Wiki so if you find any more, just add them to the list.

So blogging is on the rise and should be part of the marketing and communications strategy, but what are the key issues to consider:

Ownership
However, which department should own it? Is it the team that deals with the website, public relations, or the marketing team? The reality is probably all three. When a CEO commits to a blog, this sends a clear message to their business that it is important and will help accelerate wider adoption of blogs.

Policy
A clear blog policy is also a must to ensure that employees understand what is appropriate and what is not. You can’t try to control content, but a business blog should be just that, you shouldn’t see their personal holiday photos up there. This policy can also detail how to deal with comments, a critical but potentially time consuming task.

Frequency
There is endless debate on what is an acceptable number of posts per month. I believe quality is better than quantity. Most readers will access the content via RSS, so it is not as if they are checking back every day. They’ll be aware when you post. A two month gap between posts clearly isn’t appropriate though.

Platform
I personally don’t believe the choice of blogging tools and software really matters, however, it is essential that they be connected to the various social networks and include support for:

RSS
Tags
Trackbacks
Ping search engines and RSS aggregators

Don’t let it be a major IT project, setting up a blog should take hours with the wide availability of excellent software and services.

I hope that more UK CEO’s and companies, take the plunge soon.

Technorati Tags: blogs, business blogs, ceo blogs

What a brilliant website and campaign, how could you not click on a Google AdWords ad like this:

Unique Birthday Gift - www.cloneme.com.au - Clone somebody for their birthday! Made and delivered in 4 weeks.

Send in a digital photo of your loved one and they’ll send you back a clay clone in handy keyring size.

Wal-Mart has launched The Hub aimed at school kids. The site allows “Hubsters” to create a page on the site and upload videos for the chance to win prizes and appear in a Wal-Mart TV commercial. There are fashion tips, which are effectively just advertising for clothes you can buy at Wal-Mart.

Bloggers have not exactly given the site rave reviews and perhaps it was a little misguided for Wal-Mart to try and take on MySpace, however I think it is a good sign that such a major retailer is at least including online social networking in their marketing plan.

MyCoke.com allows users to create a V-Ego, blog, your own ringtone via a music mixer, and of course share all this with other V-Egos. It is a very bold site, and must have cost a fortune to build all this functionality. When I logged in, there were 968 other V-Egos online, so not going to cause MySpace much concern for the time being.

I am encouraged that major brands are investing in this medium. Their approach might not be perfect but they are at least willing to take the risk and reinforces that consumer generated media and social networking is an essential part of the marketing strategy.

Technorati Tags: cgm, consumer generated media, mycoke, social media