Thinking…

By Rajesh on August 11, 2007

A few random thoughts, based on recent events and conversations:

  1. Managing negative feedback by brands, on 3rd party blogs, shouldn’t be about whether to comment on these posts or not. It should first be about ‘resolution’ of issues being faced by the consumer and THEN comes the issue of commenting
  2. Similarly engaging brand supporters shouldn’t be asking them to write about the brand, it should be about INVOLVING them in the brand – learning from their inputs and insights. After all, they are the ones who love the brand, right?
  3. ‘Consistency’ is one of the 8 ‘Cs’ of communication – I noticed last week on the flight to Bangalore (Have been there 3 times in 40 days, the last time being yesterday. Love it, despite the traffic.). They are forgiven, for the merger is too new, but even then… the booking counter reads ‘Air India’, aircraft reads ‘Indian’, the staff announces ‘Indian Airlines’. India’s official carrier needs help.
  4. Talking about that, consistency of message delivery, by spokespeople, was possible and natural in traditional media, but messages needs different tackling on social media. Following a message house to the tee make the ‘conversations’ artificial – natural with your words but staying with the thoughts and philosophy?
  5. This one puzzled me for a week: a young entrepreneur in an eCommerce web business writes a transparent blog – put up all that comes from customers, no comment deletion, acknowledge mistakes, issue resolutions also I had seen – all the stuff that textbooks say.
    Then one afternoon, I ventured to make a purchase. The site in question was offering a great price but my hand wouldn’t click the ‘buy’ button.
    I couldn’t persuade myself to buy from them finally. Why? Why wasn’t I being able to trust this company? They write a blog that follows the book and a blog builds trust, that’s what I have been going around telling people myself!!
    Anyone else wouldn’t perhaps waste another moment, but for obvious reasons I couldn’t do that – it took me a week to crack it.
    Maybe at an intuitive level I knew the answer, and that may have had a role to play in my decision to ‘not buy’, but I spent some more time on the site and pinned it finally to what I thought could be the reason. “It’s the tone idiot!” I said to myself. The gentleman had a different tone when addressing the customer – mild, warm but professional – but the tone changed when talking about other subjects/ peers/ other businesses/ even replying to emails (I don’t know him but have exchanged a couple of emails) – from a pedestal, kinda arrogant and cold. I wasn’t being able to tell who he ‘really’ was. Could it be that? What do you think? We all do that sometimes – treat different stakeholders differently, don’t we?
    I did put that behind me though and made a purchase from the site recently. Are all customers forgiving? Or am I too fussy to begin with? Lol

I haven’t written in a bit. Two reasons: was busy with some work and second, didn’t really have much to say :) .
Cheers.

Print:
Posted in Quick Posts, Social Media. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • Thanks Saumya. I am sure. :). We will likely be able to revive most from the back up, but only by next weekend when my designer friend returns.
    Cheers.
    R
  • Soumya Dev
    That's really sad ... While the loss is definitely huge ... am sure, the days ahead will once again create a vast collection that will surpass the past ...
    all the best!
  • In a shocking and a rather bizarre development, several dozen (I suspect 200 odd comments) on the blog have disappeared. We are not sure if there was a breach but the loss is beyond words. There is no way to ascertain what is gone from where. Extremely disappointing.
    Rajesh
  • Thanks Toby - many companies might still go ahead and do it and once burnt, will say Social Media doesn't work :). It worked, didn't work in favour of them.
    Confidentiality is anyway covered in the contracts, so that's cool.
    So much learning coming my way with this post. Turning out to be such an interesting conversation. Thanks all. Keep writing. Jump in!
  • If a company were to prevent a person from blogging for a competitor (after leaving an organization), that would go against the very soul of social media ... openness, transparency, creating conversations. Can you image what would happen? The first thing the person would do leaving the interview is blog about it! Or twittter it during the interview. Talk about something back firing!
    However, it is not unusual for a company to have a clause in a contract preventing talking about trade secrets or competitive intelligence .. but if that were the case it would be SOP for the organization and pertain to any form of communication.
  • Sure, this would help. As we struggle with figuring out the best practices of blogging, collectively we would come across many such questions which are likely to shape the basic model of use of blogging as a communication tool for corporates/brands.
    A separate post on this will surely help. Look forward to the brainstorming on this... :) :) :)
  • Saumya, this is perhaps one of the most invigorating questions I have ever got. I am proposing to, with your permission, put this up as a separate post, for even after my attempt to reply there is so much learning that I could gain myself.
    Ok, here's my take:
    1. Blogging as a concept is fairly new and I don't know if there are any prominent examples of celebrated bloggers, joining 'direct' competition and write blogs from the opposite end. Can anyone suggest some names?
    2. There have been instances of bloggers moving to another company though- Robert Scoble is among the most prominent examples, moving from Microsoft where he lead their Channel 9 initiative to join Podtech. One of the reasons perhaps he was given the task to lead Channel 9 was because he used to write a successful blog. Also Podtech is not really competition to Microsoft.
    3. There are many other examples of successful bloggers being sought out by companies- Steve Rubel, Edelman(Micro Persuasion); Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy PR (Influential Marketing Blog).
    4. Then of course there has been blog re branding with a change of guard in terms of the face leading the conversation.
    Coming back to the question, in my opinion it is like a news channel losing its most prominent face to a competitive channel! It can happen, unless a clause preventing such a possibility was embedded in the employment contract in advnce. Does the channel (which lost the person) suffer a setback - yes, but mostly the setback is temporary and they usually they have more than one 'face' to represent the channel. Such an approach may come in handy for any company too - more than one spokesperson.
    Many companies may, going forward, prevent their leadership team to write a blog for competition, if/ when they quit. Will people agree? Depends on what level, presence they already have - who is in a position of power.
    Most importantly, it would be important for the blogger to showcase an unbiased attitude in his writings to retain credibility. Interesting it would be for anyone to be in that position - not easy if they are really prominent and the competition is direct (or worse, a bigger company) :)
    What do you think Saumya? And all?
  • Hi Rajesh,
    Have been reading BlogWorks, and find it very insightful.
    From a communication standpoint, many a times I am bugged by one thought ... thought should pen it here.
    Some corporate blogs by the top management have been very successful. However, what happens when the person joins a competition brand?
    One, he carries along his weblog readership base. Two, for him to be still credible... he has no option but to continue to directly/indirectly reassure his earlier convictions, while building on the new ones (for the new brand).
    How do companies deal with situations like this?
  • Hi Toby :) - Thanks.
    Any instances of the 'tone' of conversation making a crucial difference that come to your mind?
    Keep writing.
    R
  • You nailed it! I agree with your stance on developing blogger relations programs. The buzz from bloggers, should it come at all, is a result of excellent products/services and concern for the customer. That's where BR departs from PR.
    Your last thought struck home too. You make an excellent point. How a blogger treats people is a reflection of the brand. There is much talk about tonality and "voice" in how to write posts but not necessarily consistency when addressing different people. Something to think more about.
    Thanks for the great post!
blog comments powered by Disqus