Marketing Nirvana

In times past, I’ve shared my own Comcast horror story, and in more recent times I’ve shared with you what seemed like prompt customer service from Comcast; however through Twitter (an online micro-blogging site that’s used by tech edge case users in the Bay Area). But today, it was nice to see another such blog post from Josh Lovensohn of Webware, earlier today.

Feeling bullish I Twittered my disapproval, and shortly thereafter got a response from Frank Eliason, a customer service manager from Comcast. Eliason offered to get me in touch with someone who would let me bypass the software activation–a time (and registry) saver.

(Source: Webware)

But apparently it’s the same Eliason who’d responded to Arrington’s problems a month ago. I’m not sure if there are others from Comcast who’re on twitter or given that this is not a mainstream customer service tool, I’m wondering if he’s the only one from comcast on twitter. A search result on twitter shows him as the first result, and he tells Josh (Webware) that

Eliason tells me he’s “lost track” of the amount of people he’s helped through Twitter. A casual perusal of his responses to people’s problems range from the most mundane to the technically complex.

Given the huge negative furor Comcast creates each time their CS reps fall asleep and annoy the heck out their customers, I’d recommend creating a corporate blog with someone like Frank Eliason leading the efforts.

Why?
He’s out there and fielding numerous requests on twitter by himself (correct me if I’m wrong and there’s a team out there - it’s just that I can’t see them). That’s definitely the passion and character that goes into somebody like a Lionel Menchaca who runs Dell’s corporate blog and the same with Scoble when he was out there talking about Microsoft.

Until they do that, if you’re a Comcast customer, feel free to follow Frank on Twitter

@comcastcares

Too bad, the id reminds me of Comcast Scares! I don’t know if Comcast Cares but I sure as well, believe Frank does. Thanks, Frank!

I’d just intended for this post to be about SouthWest Airlines stepped up its efforts to incorporate social media into its corporate blog and I thought this is a great time to go over what I think is the future of product-user, 2-way communication of the future.

Click on above image to take you to the blog

Before I continue, let’s step back a bit and understand that corporate blogging per se is NOT the end game in itself. It’s a tool to help users communicate effectively with the various elements of an organization. In a software company like LinkedIn, that means ease-of-chat with our engineers, product managers, etc… and in the airline industry that may mean communication with “Mechanics, Customer Service Agents, Schedule Planners, Executives, Marketing Representatives, Flight Attendants, Pilots, and more.”

I think moving forward every corporate social media portal is gonna have a mix of the following three components with future implementations trending towards multimedia strongly

Core Communication

1. Corporate Blog
2. Twitter

Multimedia

1. Flickr
2. YouTube

Social Networking

1. LinkedIn
2. Facebook

SouthWest Airlines’ social media portal takes off

Here are some salient points culled from their old-school press release:

* Over the last two years, the blog’s function has evolved to also serve as a virtual focus group, assisting the Company through crisis and new product launches.

* The blog’s readership continues to grow steadily month-over-month and has more than doubled year-over-year since its inception in April 2006.

* “From the debate over assigned seating to the timeframe in which we release our flight schedules, the passionate comments and opinions shared on our blog have unquestionably influenced several business decisions” says Linda Rutherford, VP of Corp. Communications at Southwest.

* Nuts About Southwest features more than 30 Employee bloggers that represent a mix of Frontline and behind-the-scenes Employees

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My favorite part is that they have even included their CEOs LinkedIn Profile - Gary Kelly, although I wish the URL would have his name in it, instead of http://www.linkedin.com/in/southwestairlines. I’d just recommend their starting a group on LinkedIn as well (if they haven’t already). I even InMail’ed Linda about it.

Given that they recently started, I wonder how long they would take to beat Delta in Marketing Nirvana’s Corporate Blog rankings, which I restarted recently.

… the series is back. Frequent readers of the blog will realize that some of the big hits on my blog related to either my listing of the Top 10 CEO Blogs or the Top 10 Corporate Blogs.

Interestingly, while I waded more deeply into the realm of the corporate blogosphere and as they have been sprouting everywhere (from Dell to Facebook and the one I helped launch at LinkedIn), I’ve not had the time to pursue ranking that series but enough is enough.

So starting this week, I’ll be publishing the Top 10 15 Corporate Blog rankings on a regular basis. Yay!

Image Source: Blog Biz

I’m also mulling the idea of a series of interviews with the face of these corporate blogs to learn more about how corporate blogs happen, benefits, goals, etc… Stay tuned for that as well. But, I digress…

Methodology. I’m using Technorati authority to help navigate the corporate blogosphere terrain. This term made most sense to rank corporate blogs for 2 reasons.

1. Popularity

“It is the # of blogs linking to a website in the last 6 months. The higher the number, the more authority the blog has”.

Not only does that give a clear indication of the popularity, it also provides context for this rank in the past 6 months. You’ll be surprised at the number of dead blogs in the list, since the last ranking.

2. It’s the number of blogs vs. number of links that’s being measured

It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days

Enough said, let’s get started. Given below are the most popular corporate blogs on the planet as of May 2008. Come back next month for a revised set.

15 Most Popular Corporate Blogs (Technorati ranked) - May 2008

#15. Boeing - Authority: 67

#14. Monster - Authority: 73

#13. Kodak - Authority: 105

#12. Delta - Authority: 252

#11. Yahoo! - Authority: 297

#10. General Motors - Authority: 364

#9. Ask - Authority: 364

#8. LinkedIn - Authority: 591

#7. Digg - Authority: 641

#6. Dell - Authority: 799

#5. Yahoo! Search - Authority: 1130

#4. Facebook - Authority: 1478

#3. Flickr - Authority: 1744

#2. Adobe - Authority: 1797

#1. Google - Authority: 8492

Source: New PR Wiki, provides the listing of corporate blogs, which I then rank.

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Thanks to Joel Stein (one of my favorite writers for TIME Magazine - he wrote the George Clooney piece as well as the hilarious piece on social networking), we now have rankings for the TIME 100, a list of the most influential people on the planet.

Using a combination of web metrics he’s ranked the popularity of the individuals nominated for the TIME 100 list. Except for Mark Zuckerberg and Paul Allen (Scientists & Thinkers) the other 6 technologists in this list fell under the “Builders and Titans” Category.

I thought it’ll be cool to list the Top 8 technologists mentioned in the list and where they stand on Joel’s rankings. (Entire spreadsheet created by Joel Stein; Top 8 technologists after the jump).

Here are the Top 8 technologists, per TIME 100 (2008).

#8. Jay Adelson - CEO, Digg (TIME #86)

#7. Michael Arrington - TechCrunch (TIME #66)

#6. Jeff Bezos - CEO, Amazon (TIME #47)

#5. Mark Zuckerberg - CEO, Facebook (TIME #46)

#4. Paul Allen - Co-founder, Microsoft (TIME #41)

And, the Top 3.

#3. John Chambers - CEO, Cisco (TIME #35)

#2. Steve Ballmer - CEO, Microsoft (TIME #27)

#1. Steve Jobs - CEO, Apple (TIME #24)

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John Baldoni, a leadership consultant/coach/speaker describes the various communication problems that beset leaders and CEOs (via the Harvard Review Blog), which got me thinking of (yes, you guessed right) CEO blogging. (Read more posts from me on this topic).

While John’s post talks about four kinds of behaviors that cause communication problems and three ways to avoid them within the company, I evolve these principles to their rightful conclusion - how to communicate effectively both within the company and externally to the public.

Four types of behaviors that cause communication problems

1. “There is no listening and very little learning.”

Whether CEOs blog or not (is debatable) but CEOs should monitor brands (e.g. through google alerts, tweetscan, friendfeed, etc…) - here’s how-to?

2. “Not all managers feel that way and they do not share information with certain people on their team.”

3. “Say you discover information that will help solve a critical bottleneck in the company. You may wish to share it, but your boss refuses to allow you to do so.”

4. “Managers within the organization understand communication deficiencies but do not do take action to make it better.”

Three tactics to avoid communication problems

1. “One, acknowledge that problems occur. Take responsibility for things you can change.”

External Blog: Want to find out how to acknowledge problems and take responsibility on a corporate blog. See how Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, Facebook) acknowledged “messing this one up”

2. “Be available to your team and individuals to exchange ideas.”

Internal Blog or LinkedIn News: A good way to make that happen internally would be through an internal blog within the firewall of your company. Maybe share thoughts via LinkedIn News (which allows you to share your thoughts privately only to your colleagues within the company. (Yes, I work at LinkedIn)

3. “Initiate dialogue with individuals in different functions about issues that affect you and your team. Share information with them and ask for information in return. Keep talking.”

External Blog: I definitely won’t recommend CEOs blogging, but I think it’s a good idea for a CEO to communicate effectively (maybe contribute a monthly series on the company’s blog) and most importantly take that blog post seriously and make it a point to respond to user feedback on that post.

Does your CEO blog? Would you like him/her to? Leave a comment.

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FriendFeed may be many things - a non-stop entertainment fire hose or a ginormous Facebook style feed that’s escaped the walled garden, but noise reducer it is NOT. And, I’m sure anyone who’s tried it will tell you that. For those of you who are wondering what Friend Feed is, check out this recent piece in the New York Times about the hottest startup in twittertown.

But they all followed one another’s activities in one place: a buzzy, online water cooler called FriendFeed that lets people funnel all their online activities into a single information broadcast, and then blast that broadcast to anyone who wants to listen in.

But that’s nothing new you may think, and you’re right. LinkedIn had Network Updates, Twitter had its entire existence predicated on one such thought feed and of course Facebook’s feed (initially much derided) evolved the feed to its rightful omnipresence. Rumor has it that MySpace has now included the feed in its online repertoire as well.

What FriendFeed is to me (2 reasons after the jump)

1. What FriendFeed does for me, is it basically turns on the fire hose that’s possible in a feed (inadverdently amplifying the noise to unprecedented proportions). But at the same time, for all those information junkies FriendFeed is a god-send and I confess that for me its basic purpose is to unleash the power of the feed outside of a walled garden so I can automate and share the variety of my online existence (from twitter to flickr) in real time to to the outside world.

2. Another reason it’s not a good guide is because not a lot of people on Twitter and Friendfeed are technically “friends”, they are a much larger group of like-minded individuals who follow each other, connected by a willingness to share their day-to-day activities and participate in a town-hall style online forum. However, I try to keep my Facebook and more importantly LinkedIn contacts (hence the feed) pristine since the value of their respective feeds is more valuable to me.

So, don’t get me wrong. I love friendfeed, but I don’t think Friendfeed reduces the noise nor is it a reliable guide to what’s important for me. What do you think? If you’re a friendfeed user, does it reduce noise or amplify it? Why do you use Friendfeed? Share your thoughts in the comments section. Subscribe to this blog.

And, one more thing…

Don’t forget to add me as a “friend” on friend feed - http://friendfeed.com/vjmario

Given the nascent stage in which corporate blogging is, it’s always good to share lessons learned so the next batch of corporate bloggers (wherever they are) can read and learn. Recently, I posted the 5 lessons learned in corporate blogging upon the 1 year anniversary of LinkedIn’s corporate blog and so I was really pleased to stumble upon another such testimonial, but this time from a large company, EMC, and their lead blogger - Chuck Hollis (Vice President of Technology Alliances).

Chuck Hollis (VP, Technology Alliances and lead blogger)

Given below is a juxtaposition of Chuck’s key learnings (in quotes), with my $0.02 corporate blog learnings at LinkedIn (wherever applicable). So, what do you think are some of these lessons learned by a large organization to the art of corporate blogging and how different is that with corporate blogging best practices at a web startup

Read on for more.

Note: Let’s also keep in mind that the lessons Chuck learned is not just about a single corporate blog like I edit at LinkedIn, but more about an ecosystem of bloggers EMC currently fosters, much like at SAP, Microsoft, etc…

#1: The right bloggers within your company will find you

People blog proficiently for one reason and one reason only: they want to.

I think a key component of a community evangelist/blog evangelist at a startup is to get product managers and engineers enthused about blogging about the latest and greatest features they’re working on, since a startup’s corporate blog could be a/the key communication tool. The onus of evangelizing the benefits of blogging to every member of the team falls on the community evangelist. And, that differs from the “blog ecosystem” concept in large corporations, where the passionate bloggers rise to the top.

#2: Non-correlation with titles and blogging capacity

Just because you have a big title or a big role in the organization doesn’t magically embue you with the ability (or passion!) to blog effectively.

I personally think every individual can blog well when it comes to a topic of their interest and passion - product managers can describe their products superbly well while engineers have their own tech needs. Part of my role at LinkedIn is finding out what those special niche interests are and getting them to blog fluently on those topics. Having said that, I do argue whether executives should blog regularly. Methinks there are far more important issues to deal with.

#3: Groom bloggers - have an internal blog playground

One of the big reasons I wanted an internal social media platform was to have a “sandbox” to groom future bloggers. Guess what: it worked!

When I started at LinkedIn, there was an internal blog which was sparsely populated with content. Also, not all eyes were on this blog and sending out group emails seemed a better way of spreading memes within the organization. Hence, it made more sense to drive all attention to the corporate blog, which was the focus of my efforts. I also make it a point to send out a weekly email, outlining top 3 posts on our blog as a reminder to the entire organization to foster their involvement. Again, in a large company the “blog ecosystem” rules and having an internal blog playground makes a lot of sense in that context.

#4: Corporate blogging is an oxymoron - keep it real

The biggest challenge of any corporate blogging initiative is “corporate” — it has this nasty way of crushing all the pleasure out of what’s essentially a fun activity.

This would have to be true for all corporate bloggers whether they are from large companies or startups. I do think however, that startups may find it easier to break through the jargon given their relevant youth as opposed to well established large corporations.

#5: A community of bloggers

Newbie bloggers get all sorts of expert, compassionate help for free. And, even established bloggers need a bit of friendly feedback and coaching once in a while — including me!

This again could be true irrespective of the kind of company. I believe blogging is a passionate past time and as is the case with evangelism, once you’re bitten with the blogging bug, you make sure that you share the message with those who haven’t blogged yet thus building this community of bloggers.

Check out Chuck’s official EMC Blog | Check out Chuck’s personal blog

The bottom line is that blogging at a startup is quite different from blogging at a “corporation”, both with unique challenges. But, the underlying goal in both cases is simply the ability to communicate effortlessly without the barriers of a company, between the producers of a service/product with the consumers of that service/product. Period.

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Or maybe, 5 online tools a community manager should not live without. These are tools that I’ve grown accustomed to as they’ve grown in popularity and as of today, I can’t successfully do my job without. And, let’s not forget - I’m writing this from my point-of-view as a blogger (hence Google Notebook!). Here are the 5 (nay) 7 tools every community manager can make good use of in three categories - Organize, Communicate and Track.

ORGANIZE

1. Google Notebook

And, the best part of Google Notebook is that it’s integrated into Google Bookmarks, so this becomes a great way to gather all those little websites that you track through your daily work. Google Notebook really shines when you’re a community blogger. It helps you throw into buckets all those little URLs you gather along the way. I use it to arrange my thoughts both for my personal blog (see picture below) or ideas for LinkedIn’s corporate blog.

2. Google Reader

Again a data monitoring and aggregation tool. Try searching your “company name” within Technorati or Google blog search. The resulting feed can then be “fed” to your Google Reader where you get the most timely mentions of the brand you’re monitoring.

COMMUNICATE

A key role of the community manager is effective communication both internally (within an organization) and externally (to users). Now, when I started at LinkedIn there was an internal blog I tried blogging about topics that may be of interest. But it was rather cumbersome and I longed for a service that allowed not only me, but also for anybody within an organization to start a private discussion on professional topics of common interest with their colleagues.

Enter LinkedIn News.

3. LinkedIn News

By far, the best way I’ve found (feel free to share other options, and yes, I do work there as community evangelist) to share news articles that I think my colleagues may be interested in discussing. And, most importantly, it’s private.

4. Blog

Finally, blogs are by far the best way to maintain that all-important conversation with users in a public format. It’s great because its an open conversation that’s timely, relevant, search index optimized, and I could go on. I cannot stress the effectiveness of blogging as a web communication tool for community managers. If there’s a better way, let me know, by leaving a comment.

…and one more thing…

REAL-TIME TRACKING

One of the greatest advancements in being a customer evangelist these days is the ability to respond to user requests sooner vs. later, thanks to the following 3 tools (there may be others) that enable real-time tracking or as close to it as possible.

5. Google Alerts

I’ve mentioned before how easy it is these days to set up an email based tracking mechanism for keywords associated with your “company name” or brand. Google alerts allows you to set this up in 1 easy step. Check it out here. And, read more of my take on it here.

6. Twitter (follow me on Twitter)

Good or Bad, this is probably the key impact on businesses that twitter has wrought. Twitter is a great way to communicate with users of your product/service. How do I do that, you may ask?

2 Steps.

* Set up a tweetscan to monitor your brand (RSS or email)

* When users talk about your service - reach out to them and add them as friends. Just earlier today, John Boynton wrote how LinkedIn had helped him find a VP of Community candidate successfully and voila we’re now tracking each other on twitter!

7. Friendfeed

Presenting a real time feed of all the various services you’re addicted to, it takes immediate gratification to the next level. Caution: It could be a time sink, but check out ways to prevent that from happening, below.

How can I use it for community management:

* Search & Track all mentions of your “company name”

* You can do that either (a) directly on Friendfeed, (b) through their desktop app AlertThingy and Twhirl (links below)

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Now, many of you may complain that twitter and friendfeed are distractions. Now if you’re of the easily distracted kind there’s hope for you. Here are two simple ways to keep track of your usage/wastage of time with Twitter/Friendfeed vs. spending time on these sites.

1. Firefox extensions: TwitBin, MySocial24*7

2. Desktop apps: Twhirl, AlertThingy (I tried the thingy and it didn’t work for me)

3. The best browser time-management tool: Read more here

Again, this is NOT a comprehensive list. As community managers, do you have other tools you can’t live without. Leave a comment.

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I love sites like FriendFeed & Twitter, but many a time their inherent distractions outweigh their utility so I stick to using appropriate firefox extensions to curb my usage while at work. But, if you’d like a time monitoring tool that’ll help you bring your web addictions to a stop, look no further than firefox extension, 8aweek.

So, how does this firefox extension help you may wonder. Here are 5 ways it helps me (I’ve just tried it today and it rocks).

5 ways 8aweek can help curb your web addictions:

1. Wouldn’t it be nice if I have a firefox extension that tracks (a) the sites I visit and (b) the time I spend on it.

2. Provide you a nice, clean chart of your time spent (good sites vs. bad sites)

3. Of course, you get to set the bad sites and the max time you’d like to spend on it/day.

4. Block you from such sites if you want to stop yourself (Now that’s if you’re addicted)

5. Let’s say you stumble upon an article you love to read but have more important things to do. Just save it for later reading.

Nice! Isn’t it. Just check out my browsing usage over the past 4 hours or so. Good sites are blue and bad sites (the ones I’d like to contain my usage of) are red.

The Bottomline is if you’re addicted to the web, 8aweek is your rehab center. And, don’t get me started on why it’s called 8aweek. Find out more here.

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Not just any Fortune 100 company, but a Top 25 Brand (Source: Business Week/Interbrand). Matt Schwartz from a recruiting agency reached out to me (via LinkedIn) regarding Pepsico’s newly minted social media team, asking me if I knew someone who’d be a good fit to run that team.

First off, it’s nice to see Fortune 100 companies jumping into the social media bandwagon with a concrete plan within their marketing budget. For those of you who are out there, running social media and think you could be the dream candidate check it out.

Job Details below:

Who?
PepsiCo (LinkedIn Company Profile here)

What?
Sr. Manager of Social Media

Where?
New York

Requirements

* Technologist

* Evangelist

* Social Media Strategist and Tactician

* Management Skills

* Marketing/PR smarts

…and one more thing. 10 years business experience.

Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll put you in touch with Matt. In related job news, it was refreshing to hear John Boynton finding his VP of Community on LinkedIn. Nice!

–
This is just my simple effort to pass on some good opportunities to those who read this blog. If this ain’t a good fit for you, feel free to pass on this to others who may find it useful. Also, those of you who are looking for social media jobs should check out this comprehensive list of sites that my friend Jeremiah maintains. It’s definitely worth bookmarking.

And, if you do get the gig, leave a comment. Go Social Media!

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