What has Montreal got to do with business blogs and Web 2.0? Surprisingly, quite a lot – this French-Canadian city seems to be a real beehive of developers, programmers, consultants, internet and gaming specialists – making large foreign ‘Techy companies’ to elect domicile in Montreal… the newest additions: Both YAHOO and GOOGLE this year opened development offices in this European-flair city – while the second largest global gaming company, UbiSoft continues its expansion with now over 3000 employees on one site alone.
Webcom 2007, held in Montreal last week, allowed us to get a glimpse of where thought leaders stand in terms of how Web 2.0 technology and tools may change the way corporations will do business in the future.
A quite impressive selection of speakers lured me to visit the event - and I must say I did not leave the place disappointed: Debbie Weil (debbieweil.com) - The “Mona Lisa” of the corporate blog and author of “The Corporate Blogging Book”; Teresa Valdez Klein (teresacentric.com) - Self-proclaimed facebook “punk kid”; Thomas Vander Wal (vanderwal.net) – The father of tagging; Lee Bryant (headshift.com) - The “Royal Jelly Hive Mind Guru”; and Robyn Tippins – “The Online Community Queen” are just some of the great speakers that have made this Montreal venue a truly outstanding one.
Please find following some notes gathered from the speakers:
Debbie Weil – The “Mona Lisa” of the corporate blog and author of «The Corporate Blogging Book»
Debbie Weil opened the dance of WebCom Montreal 2007 – and provided the community of Web 2.0 ‘gatherers and hunters’ with insider knowledge coming out of her vast experience and know-how in terms of corporate blog consulting:
• Debbie: “Corporate blogging is one year away form mainstream adoption.”
To illustrate this projection, Debbie presents a slide coming out of the GARTNER labs. According to this slide from August 2005, corporate blogging back then was projected to be less than 2 years away from the ‘plateau of productivity’.
If this projection was right, corporate blogs should become mainstream anytime soon – but is this the case? Out of my own experience: We are now beginning to see more and more marketing directors, heads of the PR departments, communications agencies and business consultants roam the corridors of conferences, seminars and colloquiums to inquire about corporate blogs, podcasts, videocasts, social media tools and other integrated Web 2.0 technologies. Corporations have become increasingly aware about the potential for outreach using “easy-to-implement and handle” Web 2.0 tools: Early adopters – mostly comprised of larger organizations such as General Motors, Nortel, Dell and consorts – have made their move for quite some time now and we currently assist in the emergence of smaller organizations, para-public organizations (thechildrenmediaportal.com) and individual CEO blogs.
• Debbie: “Fear is an important issue that refrains corporations from maintaining a business blog!”
Fear of being criticized, fear of loosing control. As we all know, fear is rooted in the unknown – we fear what we do not know, so we imagine the worst and from that projection, fear raises. Blogs are essentially no more different than picking up the phone and sharing insights about our products, services, new projects or market insights to a business prospect or existing client. The first step to tackle fear is to face it in asking questions – it is that simple. Questions about what a business blog can do, what its advantages are and how it works. Questions also about what its limitations are, what it cannot do and how to strategically approach the use of this powerful tool. Knowledge takes fear away – and there is a lot to gain from getting acquainted early with a tool that is about to shape the way we and our competitors will do business tomorrow.
• Debbie: “Strategy is important!”
While in the past, corporate blogs have often adhered to the erroneous principle of Ready-Fire-Aim instead of Aim-Ready-Fire, the new generation of business consultants such as Debbie (www.debbieweil.com) or myself (www.intelegia.com) leads corporations back to established business principles that impose rigor and strategy before implementing a business blog.
• Debbie: “Corporate blogging is a revolution in communication – its true customer service!”
I join Debbie in pointing out the important role a business blog can play to reinforce customer service objectives – in my opinion though, corporate blogs can do more. While some organizations are slow in perceiving the advantages for maintaining a simple business blog or a full-blown ‘Media Center’ featuring integrated blog, podcast and videocast capabilities – others have come to realize that staying behind may cost them valuable points on the level of reinforcing brand awareness, improving customer satisfaction and retention, research & development and risk & crisis management.
• Some examples to demonstrate the effective use of corporate blogs and the power of upcoming use of Web 2.0 technology:
1) CUSTOMER FEEDBACK ON CORPORATE BLOG TRIGGERS CHANGE - SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: After announcing on its corporate blog changes in the advance booking reservation program, the blog receives over 200 comments form Southwest customers asking them to please maintain the initial policy. Surprised about the fact that customers actually cared about this specific program, Southwest not only maintained the original policy but improved it for the holiday season!
If that is not corporate blogging at its best to improve customer service and retention, then I don’t know what! Thanks Debbie for this nice example.
2) SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY DRIVES USAGE - VERIZON: Verizon just launched a Facebook application that will allow its customers to write a message from within Facebook that will be sent to a Verizon customers’s cell phone. With this, Verizon provides a compelling example of how to use Web 2.0 technology to effectively implement a social media marketing strategy that drives usage - and possibly sales. Surprise your kid by sending a message to his/her cell phone from within Facebook and you are ‘cool’ again…;-)
3) CRISES MANAGEMENT THROUGH BUSINESS BLOG - DELL: You did here about Dell laptops going up in flames - here is a nice picture of it…:-) And here is how Dell dealt with it on their blog, used this time for crisis management. Ok, it took Dell a bit of time to react and defuse the bomb, but they did in the end – and customers were happy again.
Next time – read about Teresa Waldez Klein’s insights into facebook - Stay tuned!
