(Update) By the Numbers: Blogging Roadblocks

May 8th, 2008 Todd Cabral Posted in Blogging, Branding, Lead Generation, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Outbound Communications, Sales, Web | No Comments »

Time for bloggingLast week, I happened upon a LinkedIn Question that offered a glimpse into the challenges that have been keeping companies out of the blogosphere.  So I did what any self respecting blogger would do, I wrote about it and promised an update when more data became available.  As the answers trickled in, I found myself craving more responses to try and arrive at a meaningful conclusion, so I posed the question to our newsletter recipients via a "1-Second Survey" - and many of our readers accepted the challenge. 

With a little more to go on, I think it’s safe to say that most respondents agree: time is the biggest impediment to corporate blogging.  But behind the reason given lies an implication - that blogging just isn’t a priority for many businesses…yet.  For months, we’ve been talking to companies that are using their blogs to communicate more efficiently and effectively with their key audiences and company ecosystems, and their stories are inspiring and compelling. 

One company is blogging to put a personal face on its operations, and learning tons about its customers in the process.  Another is using a blog to share real-time data with industry watchers, positioning itself as a leading authority in the process.  Yet another has moved its blog from the edge to the epicenter of its corporate communications program, amassing mounds of message-driven media coverage with each new post.  None of these companies cite time as a barrier to blogging.  In fact, one now cites time as a barrier to writing press releases.  My, how times are changing…

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Slogans: Same Thing But Different?

May 6th, 2008 Jeff Gwynne Posted in Branding, Collateral, Marketing, Messaging, Outbound Communications, Sales | No Comments »

Slogans: Same Thing But Different?The other day I was collecting my mail at the town post office/store/restaurant/bank (yeah, I live in one of those towns) and noticed a couple of guys getting coffee. I noticed these guys because they both had near identical sweatshirts with the name of their employer, a landscaper, on them. They were the same color, had the same layout and fonts, same everything except each had a different slogan…

Quality That’s Affordable

Because Quality Matters

We all know that companies often have different treatments of their visual brand - different sized logos, logos with and without the company name and different colors within the palette. In fact, Yahoo! and Google do this brilliantly when it comes to holidays. Regardless of the treatment, you still know what company it is.

But, is it OK to display slogan variations around a corporate message or attribute? Does this confuse the brand?

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By The Numbers: Blogging Roadblocks

May 1st, 2008 Todd Cabral Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Outbound Communications, Web | 3 Comments »

Blogging Roadblocks Here at the Science of Marketing, we’re fascinated by numbers. That’s why a recent question on LinkedIn caught my eye. The question, posed by Internet marketing consultant and fellow blogger Lea Woodward, asked businesses and business owners, "What’s the biggest hurdle stopping you from blogging?" With only 11 respondents, there isn’t much data to analyze, but I think it’s a great question and warrants further investigation. For now, some data is better than none, so here are the current results.

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Promoting Your Blog: Socialize It

April 29th, 2008 Jeff Gwynne Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Outbound Communications, Verbal Brand, Web | 2 Comments »

Promoting Your Blog: Socialize It There are a few simple ways to promote your blog through the social networks that you probably already use. I’m talking about LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook. Here’s a few things that I do to promote this blog to my network.

 

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Blog Content: Consider the Source

April 24th, 2008 Todd Cabral Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Outbound Communications, Web | No Comments »

blog content- sourceOne of the greatest benefits of blogging is a steady stream of interesting content that can be used to engage and inform prospects. But constantly giving birth to new content can be a daunting proposition for marketers, technical experts and CEOs alike, all of whom have plenty of other business to keep them busy. Not surprisingly, the most common question we get when we talk to companies about blogging is, "what on earth am I going to write about once a week?"

If you’ve found yourself asking the same question, read on. What follows are some tips that may help you hatch the content your company needs for blogging success.

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Pricing Strategy: MicroViews

April 22nd, 2008 Jeff Gwynne Posted in Branding, Pricing, Sales | No Comments »

Pricing StrategyMost high tech marketing professionals look at pricing from a macro level (at least that’s what I did back in the day). Typical things to consider in setting a price include: competition, value, elasticity, market position and entry. But not many look at the implication of the actual numbers on the price tag in terms of customer perception - the MicroView. Over the last couple of weeks I have read two pieces (an article and a blog) that get down to the digits. Both are worth a read if you are responsible for setting your company’s prices.

In the April 2008 issue of Scientific American, Wray Herbert reports on some pricing research conducted by the University of Florida in "Why Things Cost: $19.95". The research says that when considering the starting point in a pricing negotiation the consumer is more likely to perceive the value in terms of the least significant digit. For example, if the asking price of a widget is $50, the consumer may perceive the value to be $40. But, if the asking price is $49.95, he will probably perceive the value as $49.55 or $49.25. The bottom line is that the more precisely a vendor prices a product, the more likely the customer will pay a price that is close to asking. Interesting.

In his blog post, "How sharp is your pricing strategy?", Drew (is there more than one?) discusses the impact of pricing on your brand. He notes that Walmart doesn’t price items with the standard $9.99, but, instead, uses prices like $9.83. This "odd" pricing helps reinforce Walmart’s brand promise of low prices. As Drew says "Those pinpoint prices speak volumes."

So, high tech product managers, do you have a MicroView? If so, please share.

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Web Sites and Blogs: Tying It All Together

April 17th, 2008 Todd Cabral Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Outbound Communications, Web | No Comments »

Web Sites and blogs: Tying It AllTogetherOne question that’s been popping up centers around the level of acceptable linkage between a company’s web site and its blog. Some of the common variations of this question include "Should we host our blog on the same domain as our web site?", "Is it OK to link from our blog to our web site?", and "Can we post company news on our blog?". All very good questions. And unfortunately, all these questions share a common, nebulous answer - "It depends."

Let’s look at these questions one at a time.

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Blogging: Stay Out Of The Lumberyard

April 15th, 2008 Jeff Gwynne Posted in Blogging, Marketing | 8 Comments »

Blogging - How to stay out of the lumberyardLast week, The Wall Street Journal ran a report on golf. Since it’s finally golf season in New England and I had recently witnessed my business partner sink a hole-in-one, I read the report looking for something that would help my game. I didn’t find anything, but I did read an astounding (at least to me) fact: 13 billion golf balls have been sold over the past ten years. And where did most of those balls end up? Right in the lumberyard (aka, woods, water and weeds).

I got to thinking that these balls are a lot like blogs. There are lots of both, and most are lost. And golf, like blogging, is easy to do, but hard to do well. So, could I learn something from golf that could help make me a better blogger?

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High Tech Blogging: Gorillas in the Midst

April 10th, 2008 Todd Cabral Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Outbound Communications, Web | No Comments »

High Tech BloggingI was recently doing some research on blogging for a high tech client, and as I scribbled down notes and numbers an interesting fact jumped off the page. In high tech, large companies are much better bloggers than small ones. Of course, my sample space was limited to a certain segment of the enterprise market, but even still, a fairly broad search for small high tech companies that are active in the blogosphere turned up very few results. Meanwhile, Cisco, IBM and Sun have embraced blogging as a vehicle for communications with the outside world, harnessing the collective experience of their employees to create a constant stream of valuable content that builds thought leadership and draws traffic to their respective web sites. In short, the gorillas have become the kings of the blogging jungle.

What surprises me is not the amount of muscle these giant corporations have put behind blogging, but the lack of activity from their smaller, younger counterparts. After all, high tech startups should have a lot to blog about in light of the innovation they bring to a given market and the close ties they build with customers. They are also resource constrained, so you’d think they would want to capitalize on the relatively low cost of awareness that a blog provides. And being on the cutting edge usually means a willingness to adopt new approaches to marketing, so new media should intrigue more than scare startups. But still, emerging high tech companies have yet to embrace the blog as a credible platform for communications, while the gorillas thump their chests and claim the territory.

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Blog Rating: I Need A Better Juice

April 8th, 2008 Jeff Gwynne Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »

I love statistics. I especially love stats that, when combined with other stats, yield interesting and useful information - whether it’s the Quarterback Rating, the baseball Fielding Percentage or ESPN’s Fantasy Uber Score. But when it comes to rating a blog, I’m not in love with the options. The best that I have found is the Blog Juice Rating. But I believe its formula leaves much to be desired.

If you are not familiar with it, the Blog Juice Rating (or BJR) is a number from 0.0 to 10.0 that ranks the "juice" of a blog. While the absolute BJR may not be all that useful, changes to the rating are. The BJR is composed of four statistics and weightings: number of Blogline subscribers (40%), Alexa rank (15%), Technorati rank (30%), and number of inbound links according to Technorati (15%). There is some scaling of the numbers, but basically a BJR is the sum of the weighted statistics. Scaling aside, I don’t think the weightings and component statistics accurately gauge a blog’s juice. If it were me, I would…

  • Eliminate the Alexa ranking. Alexa ranks all web sites and does not specifically rank blogs.
  • Flip the weightings of Blogline subscribers and inbound links. Inbound links are an indication that people are actually reading (and reacting to) a blog; subscribers may, or may not, be reading. As an aside, how many people use Bloglines to subscribe anyway? It would be nice to count the total number of RSS subscriptions with something like Feedburner.
  • Divide the Alexa weighting allocation between Technorati (which is focused on blogs) and inbound links - 5 to Technorati and 10 to inbound links.

So, my new improved BJR would be: inbound links (50%), Technorati rank (35%) and total RSS subscribers (15%).

Does anyone have any other suggestions on enhancements to the BJR? Does anyone know of any other useful blog ratings schemes?

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