However, as with all the other concepts, there are pitfalls that marketers have to take care of on this road. Below is the list of mistakes the marketers tend to make when thinking of blogging for their companies.

1. Blog is for selling

Often corporate blogs are introduced by marketers who set the major objective for this kind of activity as increasing sales. You have to understand one thing here: a blog is a tool for communication in the first place. It is a sales tool in some cases…but in the last place. It’s easy to start a blog, it’s a bit more difficult to attract visitors, but probably not so much for a well-known company or brand. And once you have attracted a certain amount of visitors, the content is not a problem – they’ll help. But it is the easiest to lose it all when you start selling instead of talking. You will sell more, but indirectly, through increased loyalty.

2. It will go along by itself

Ok, I said it’s not the most difficult task for a good brand to attract visitors to its blog. But it won’t work as you want it to. Unless you follow up on it every minute of every hour. Customers will have problems – you will have complaints. You deal with them – you win, you ignore – you lose. Simple.

3. I won’t need speak to them

Again, once you start a blog, you have to be ready for direct and open discussions with your clients. If you don’t have time for that – forget about starting it at all. If you don’t wish to deal with people in a transparent manner, forget about the blog at all.

4. I’m in control

No, you are not. You control your website. You control the news block of your website, even if you have the comments module attached. You can even technically control your blog. But what’s the point of the blog in that case? A weblog or a community is for you to share with people. Whatever it is – they have to know and you have to deal.

5. I don’t need a strategy

You don’t need it, that’s true… if you are Google, Apple, Microsoft or the like. If you are not, do not start without it. You need a strategy, you need to set goals and objectives. Just like with the business you are supporting with the blog. Take it as a separate project with its tasks and resources. Friending with a brand just for the sake of friending is not an option for users. They need to know what the point is, what objectives are set for the project, what problems it solves and how it can be valuable for them. The value doesn’t have to be monetary or materialistic, but it has to be there some form.

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It is about crowdsourcing – the company has introduced a MyStarbucksIdea.com  website where you can register to share your ideas about just how the company could improve. The visitors can view the ideas by recent, popular and top all-time (which must be the same as popular I guess).

The registered users are encouraged to share their ideas and vote for already posted ones. Behind this are the Starbucks’ employees who are specialists in various fields, and they will respond to the advice – not directly to users but by acting, hopefully.

There’s also a blog page – called Ideas In Action – where the company will most probably describe the way they are acting on the advice received from the community. So far there are just a couple of posts – one welcoming by Howard Schultz, and one from Chris Bruzzo, where he wow-thanks the community participants and encourages them to keep on sharing.

This is a great way to get even deeper into communications with the customer community and have a better knowledge of their preferences. Crowdsourcing is a win-win for the parties, and Starbucks should keep their efforts on this site – more and better communication and, more importantly, show action to the community who take their time to share their knowledge…

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An interesting posting, worth reading. Very briefly, it goes like this:

1. Know your Achilles heel. Being aware of your weak points will help you be better prepared for attacks on you, if not save your brand completely and unaffectedly.

2. Assume that everything will make its way to the web. In our world of gtechnologies you can never be sure that anything you express aloud (by voice or in writing)will remain within yourself. So, you should always be careful about what you are saying or writing – always assume it will go public.

3. Create positive online impression. Good intuitive interface, with necessary content meeting expectations of your company, is a way to make a first impression on the audience online.

4. Choose your blog voice carefully. Note, that your corporate blog is not your personal blog. Let a team of employees manage it and fill it with content – their ideas, opinions and communications with the customers and perspectives. Corporate should be corporate (but do not make it completely impersonal).

5. Hang out at the right social network. Do not be driven by statistics to the most popular networks. Rather, find a network with more likely the audience that you target, the audience that talks, or is willing to talk, about you. The best way to target is creating your own network (will take time and efforts to promote, but in the end it will be your audience… and there are open source systems providing tools for creating networks from scratch).

6 . Send bloggers love letters, rather than PR pitches. Keep talking to the most influential bloggers on a constant basis. Agree with them, argue with them, comment on their posts. The more you talk to them, the more they are willing to talk to you. Next time they find fault with you, they might choose to talk to you first before publishing harsh criticism out loud.

7. Build your Google reputation now, not later. It will be much harder to improve your bad reputation than to creat one positive from the start. Once search engine spiders have indexed a negative article about you, it will be there, and who knows how fast you will be able to take it down and bring one positive up instead.

8. Monitor online reputation as often as email. Back to No.7 – do not let them have you caught on smth bad. As soon as smth appears on the web you have to be sure that you will respond promptly to reduce the impact.

9. Face the attackers. Ostriches are not a good example to follow – do not hide your head in the sand whenever you see an attack on your from a blogger. You might choose to wait a couple of days until the problem just goes away, resolves itself. But this is not necessarily going to happen. One of the attacking bloggers could be a Times journalist in the end, and you might become a hot news that very evening. Just face the problem, do something. Admit your fault if necessary, apologise, and take action to prevent further distress.

10. Three words to remember. SINCERITY, TRANSPARENCY, CONSISTENCY. I’ll just quote here:

Sincerity means wanting to hear from your customers and the desire to truly provide a positive experience with your company. Transparency involves tearing down the walls of corporate rhetoric and PR spin–the more you share with your customers the more you’ll win their trust. Consistency is a vital component for any reputation management efforts. Your customers will forgive your isolated failure, but if you’re not consistently living-up to your brand promise, they’ll find a company that does.

Great stuff from Andy Beal. If you liked it, you might wish to read his book – see the link up here in the beginning of the post.

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Gazprom Media (part of the Gazprom) has acquired the Russian copy of YouTube – the video sharing site Rutube.ru. The site was started right after the older brother was bought by Google. The Russian site has not received the same amount of money, but the specialists all agree that it was still overestimated ($ 15 mln). This sum is probably nothing for Gazprom, but the deal means a lot not only to RuTube guys, but also to the industry. I don’t know the official statistics, but it seemed to me that the site had been dying out lately, even before YouTube launched their Russian interface. Now the competition will become even tougher on them, and Gazprom’s investements might give them a chance to fight.

I disagree with the analysts who expect RuTube to become just an Internet platform for their more traditional media channels (the holding is strongly represented in TV, radio and print media). The guys there are not stupid, even if they do not have that huge experience in the net. Moreover, none of the RuTube staff are leaving – everybody, including the tops are staying with the company. It looks more like RuTube won a good round of funding, so I believe, content-wise there are not going to be any significant strategic changes.

As for the industry impact, Russian Internet is heating up. We remember the last year’s big news when russian holding SUP bought Livejournal  – the social network most popular with the Russian audience. I also wrote just yesterday about another social networking site – Hi5 – launching their Russian interface, and I believe, more news will be coming from the country.

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The company quotes the E-marketer’s article expecting Russia to be the 2nd biggest Internet population in Europe, following Germany. Add to this all the Russian-speaking population in the countries of former Soviet Union, and the attractiveness of the audience becomes quite obvious.

Good move from one of the world’s most popular social networking sites. This should add to their network of users, especially considering the slowliness of their competition.

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The main requirements are that you have to be a blogging, testing and coffee enthusiast. Sign up by providing your blog url (which will be published on the net amongst others) and, if you are eligible, you will be sent a trial version of the new-flavoured coffee Jamaican Me Crazy.

Who and how decides on the eligibility is what I am not sure about, but I know for certain that blogging from Russia I may forget about being among of the happy ones

A very neat, cute and interesting launch – idea to my liking. Hope both Joffrey’s and the bloggers will enjoy…

Technorati : beta test, blogs, coffee, internet, marketing, web 2.0

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What you need as a Facebook user, is choose a gift (for the moment this will have to be a Twix or Galaxy chocolate), and make a payment through PayPal. The recepient then will be delivered a Facebook message, requiring a mobile number to which a voucher code is sent. This code can then be exchanged for the gift at one of 12 500 participating shops through the UK.

The idea looks pretty raw to be, and only UK-based just yet, however, it is a pleasure to see the giants like Mars searching for ways to combine traditional marketing techniques with completely new methods of our digital age.

One might argue that a gift should be, well, gived… Rather than having the receiver search for the participating stores. True, but let’s hope this will be another step further. And… come on, as if you wouldn’t like to get or give a little something to a mate that you might not have a chance to meet every day but rather once in a month, or not even so. And this now becomes just a couple of clicks away.

I don’t know how confidential the information is, and neither do I know how strict the regulations are, but it would be great for Mars if they had a chance to link their cute widget to birthdays or anniversaries info on Facebook, and let the best customers have little somethings from Mars themselves…

Technorati : facebook, internet, marketing, mars, social network, web 2.0

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The idea of the project is great and it has been very successful, claiming millions of registered users. How many of them are fake is another story but anyway, the number of visits is very impressive – claiming the figures of around 50 million people over the last month.

However, what I have noticed is that people who are being interviewed seem to be quite careless about what is going on around. The striking point: the owner is very certain about the fact that his project and the rival site Vkontakte will be the leaders in the near future, with the competition lagging behind. Honestly, I hope (for his own good) that his choice of words and tone is not as confident when talking to the investors. Be confident but careful, and remember to look around for competition.

The same people managing Odnoklassniki project would in another article comment on Myspace expanding to Russia: these guys have nothing to do here, the market is shared by the two projects (I mentioned them above), and there’s no more room for Myspace. Come on, just have a look at Myspace’s concept to find that they are different. And have a look at their investors to find that they can find some space for themselves here in Russia. I would say, if you are a Myspace, a Facebook, a Badoo or anything of the kind, do not waste your time – the leaders here are very willing to give away their users.

Unfortunately, Myspace have been really slow so far. Their post about a single vacancy has been on for months, and God knows how long it will keep hanging there. I wonder what their HR policy is…

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One should have expected this sort of a strike back. What kind of a Web 2.0 experience would it have been otherwise? J And, though not directly on the rating site Ratemyprofessors.com, the communication is now transferring into a true dialogue.

What do we get from it? We come to understanding that professors are far from being boring – their wit and sense of humour give away really intelligent and nice people who have been often judged by losers who flunk their exams for no other reason but their own laziness or foolishness (to put is soft). Some, though, are exactly the way they are described by the students. Although the rating sites are perceived mostly as a joke, professors are not just having fun filming the movies. There happens to be a well-grounded criticism from the students, and the teachers have a chance to view themselves from their point of view. Some take the chance to apologize if they find the criticism well-argued.

However, the majority of the professors state that they do not normally check the rating and comments. To me, this seems wrong – among the boundless (if there are so many) comments from the whining students there will appear a couple of useful comments that are worth thinking about. Therefore, this strike-back project seems a tool to attract those pedagogues to the site more often, and respond accordingly – not necessarily through a movie but through educational process.

I hope, the films will continue, and the parties will have a chance to communicate to each other the points that they, for that reason or the other, cannot (or just don’t) discuss in class.

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