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Brave new blogging world
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Use blogs, social networking sites and bookmarking sites to place yourself at the centre of a customer community, writes Bryan Collins.

The web is a great platform for businesses to market their services and communicate with customers.

Two of the most effective tools for doing this are blogs and social networking sites. Blogging is being taken more and more seriously in Ireland.

There are an estimated 4,000 Irish blogs alone, with new ones being set up every day. Partly thanks to the increase in broadband penetration consumers are increasingly turning to these blogs as an alternative source of news and information.

While blogging is a tool naturally geared towards those working in IT, this web 2.0 communication tool also offers opportunities to businesses in a range of other industries.

One business person who is benefiting from blogging is Barry Meehan, co-owner of the Tipperary-based World Wide Cycles.

Meehan started writing his blog a year and half ago and he recently addressed the Irish Internet Association explaining how blogging has helped grow his business.

“The people who read it have a much clearer sense of our personality than they would ever get from just logging onto the website on its own,” said Meehan.

“That is important in business. One day I was washing my own bike, I just took a couple of pictures and wrote up a description of what I was doing. Sales [of the cleaning products] for the three weeks after that post . . . quadrupled.”

The World Wide Cycles' blog actually ranks higher on the various search engines than the shop's website. It is also driving traffic to the shop's website - as many as 30 per cent of the blog readers navigate to the online store. Meehan sets aside an hour or two every Monday to update the blog. His recent posts talked about some newly launched bike parts, the FBD Insurance Rás and even a muse on what a race commented on by Micheal O’ Muircheartaigh would sound like.

“It has evolved over time,” he said. “When I began blogging first I didn't really know what direction it was going to go in. The stories might be cycling related but I try and make it entertaining for people as well. Every third or fourth blog, I try and get something from YouTube or put a couple of pictures there as well. The blogs that get the best reaction are ones that are a mixture of both, that can have text and a story in it and a picture to illustrate the story.”

Blogs can also be a good place to talk about new product launch or campaign. Social media company Picture Works, uses its blog to talk about its latest advertising post cards and to display images and clips for its recent media campaigns.

Stephen O'Reilly, sales and marketing manager, PictureWorks, was adamant about their effect.

“We were looking for a simple way to increase our online presence and to inform and interact with media agencies and the general public,” he said.

“We have a news section on the website but we were finding it more time consuming to update, so we choose to go with a blog. On a good day we can get up to 100 visits onto the blog. In the six months [since] we launched it has generated a big interest in some of our social media offerings and helped to improve our search rankings.”

Writing a blog is a very effective way for a business to get feedback. The Picture Works blog often receives comments from other bloggers and readers offering their thoughts on a particular campaign or advertising postcard.

However, someone considering starting a business blog should not confuse it with a marketing or advertising brochure.

Piaras Kelly of Edelman Communications pens two blogs. One is about Edelman's activities and the other is a personal effort about public relations, technology and the media. He recommends that business people think of their business blogs as conversations with customers.

“If somebody finds something interesting or disagrees with you they will naturally just enter in a comment,” he said. “It just becomes a conversation. You will find the same people coming back to your site and leaving the comments. They are your subscribers. You need to be able to cater for them.”

Catering for blog readers successfully means uploading informative and varied posts revolving around a set theme, on a regular basis. This can be a time-consuming process and not always with tangible benefits. This means would-be bloggers need to ask themselves if they would be better served writing a post or working at some other aspect of the business.

“I try to be topical with stuff that is happening in the news,” said Kelly. “Ultimately, I am always going to come back to PR and communications. There is no point in me updating my blog everyday about the fact that I support Manchester United. If it is going to be something like how the Glazers engaged with the Man U fan base, when they took over that is where maybe I will bring in my personal interests.”

Business bloggers also need to bear in mind that whatever they write reflects back on the business for better or worse, and once something has been posted up on the internet it can be very hard to remove.

“You can be controversial on your views on certain topic but I wouldn't be out there slagging off the competition. It . . . doesn't look well, on your part. If you wouldn't see yourself saying that in real life, [while] talking to a client, a customer or a competitor, then I certainly wouldn't be doing that online,” said Kelly.

Michele Neylon pens a technology and business blog for hosting company Blacknight Solutions. He believes blogging is great way for customers to get to know, and trust, him. However, he cautions about being overly familiar with readers.

“There are certain things that you shouldn't talk about,” said Neylon.

“Certain turns of phrase or language that you might use, while speaking to a friend in the pub at the weekend, might be fine there, but would you really want that to be associated with your company in public?”

Companies also need to be aware that the type of posts they write could leave them open to a defamation action if they make false and damaging claims about their competitors. In 2001, a Mayo business man was convicted of defamation and ordered to pay substantial damages to a rival, after he advertised her as a prostitute online.

TJ McIntyre is a lecturer in the School of Law at University College Dublin and a consultant with Merrion Legal Solicitors.

“Blogs have given people global reach for the words in a way that, until recently, was only accessible to the professional media,” he said.

“The difference is the professional media have specific training and they also have backup, in the form of lawyers.”

“There is a risk that businesses are exposing themselves possibly to liability that they might not be aware of. Defamation extends not just to individuals, it also extends to other businesses. A posting about another business which is false, which damages the reputation of that business, is actionable.”

Neylon said that he received legal threats regarding old comments posted on the www.Irishspeedtest.com forum.

He explained that it was important that any business which received complaints about a comment posted on their blog take down the offending statement promptly.

“You have had cases in England and the US of people being sacked for what they wrote in their own blogs. That may be a problem if [the distinction] is not clear. Ideally, if you are in that situation you should probably have two separate blogs,” said McIntyre.

Blogging is just one part of the Web 2.0 communications package. Social networking is a phenomenon that millions of internet users around the world have embraced. The most popular social networking websites are Facebook, MySpace and to a lesser extent Bebo.

Facebook was set up by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, as a way for Harvard students to keep in contact. It now has over 69 million registered users, recently reporting a revenue around $150 million.

Thomas Anderson, Christopher DeWolfe and some other employees from marketing company eUniverse set up MySpace in 2003.Their aim was to get as many like minded music fans as possible to share common interests.

Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp bought MySpace in 2005 for around $580 million. The site now has over 106 million registered users.

Bebo is one of Ireland's most popular social networking. Its audience is primarily young people and college students and its Irish user base shot up from 6,000 to 130,000 in 2007. One Irish organisation which has used Bebo to successfully target its audience is recycling organisation, Repak.

Repak set up its Bebo page to compliment the organisation's blog and to promote recycling week. According to Repak's marketing executive, Alma Jordan, the organisation's Bebo page allows it to communicate with young people who wouldn't normally read the newspaper or trade magazines that Repak traditionally relies on.

Jordan explained: “It is so easy to set up. The capabilities behind [Bebo] are absolutely massive. We can have audio. We can have video. We can put up our press campaigns. We can put up our photo launches . . . that we have had.”

Repak's Bebo page has had over 18,000 visitors and 1,000 of these have signed up to be “friends'‘ with the organisation. Repak also recently ran a competition for young people to design their own bottle bank and pictures of the entries are viewable on the site along with comments from users, polls, a blog and even a carbon footprint calculator.

“It has been an absolutely huge success story especially in not only targeting the younger audience but in targeting the international audience. Any marketer worth their salt knows the importance of these sites. They are highly accessible, they are highly utilised and they are going to become more and more sophisticated,” said Jordan.

However, as with blogs, social networking sites are not suitable for all types of businesses. They can be quite time-consuming and business people need to ask if building an online list of varied “friends' or contacts is relevant to their business.

“If you are selling shoes, for example, in Ennis . . . and you are not selling online and you have no interest in selling online then what's the point in social networking? It is not going to bring you any advantage. It is going to cost you more in lost time than it will bring you in sales,” said Neylon.

Business people who feel they can benefit from a social networking page should look at LinkedIn. It is the most popular business orientated social networking website and was founded in 2002, by Reid Hoffman. The site has more than 22 million registered users in over 150 industries and is valued at around one billion dollars.

LinkedIn lets registered users build a list of contact details or ‘connections' of business people they know and trust.

Neylon said: “We have a certain amount of business through it but I find it's more for establishing contacts. If I wanted to speak to somebody in particular company, they can see me from my LinkedIn profile and they can work out for themselves whether they really want to be talking to me or not. It saves a lot of time and headaches for all parties concerned.”

“For professional networking it is absolutely fantastic. It encourages you to fill out as many of your professional details as possible and it also encourages the entire idea of referral business. There is a great value in that.”

“There is a range of Irish business social networking sites in areas like marketing, tourism and IT. Enterprise Ireland runs www.Irishbusinessnetwork.de, which is aimed at Irish professionals who operate in Germany. Another is www.Irishbusinesswomen.com. It is a discussion forum facilitated by Mayo County Enterprise board. These advantage of these specific networking sites is that the majority of users have similar business interests.

However, social networking sites are not a substitute for face-to-face contact and they are not appropriate for all types of businesses. There are other pitfalls too. A recent Eircom commissioned survey found 78 per cent of workers use their internet connection for personal reasons (like social networking), with many spending up to an hour a day doing so. The Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Organisation (ISME) recommends employers monitor their staff's internet usage and have an IT policy everybody is aware of.

This is to prevent staff members posting sensitive company information on a website. An ISME spokesperson also explained that a clear company IT policy reduces exposure to a bullying or sexual harassment cases.

This could arise if an employee posts inappropriate comments on a site about another staff member, while in work. There are larger legal implications for companies using social networking sites too.

McIntyre said: “Your social networking site . . . is a form of advertising. Are you trying to sell into a particular jurisdiction? Is it a case that you are trying to sell to children in the US? You mightn't realise you are suddenly selling to a world-wide audience and you have to comply with world wide laws when you are advertising.”

He advised that users of sites like LinkedIn get permission from their customers or clients before putting up specific information about them online, and be mindful that the webpage doesn't start sending unsolicited or spam e-mails.

“If you are spamming them. . . that is in breach of Irish law. Social networking . . . involves creating databases for your contacts. The problem with that is the moment you start creating a database of your contacts you are immediately into data protection territory.”

McIntyre explained that it is important companies draw a clear distinction between a business social-networking page and a personal one. This means that when a staff member leaves the company he does not walk out the door with a personal social-networking page filled with business contacts.

The various social networking sites incorporate blogging tools, but there are numerous software packages available online for someone seeking a dedicated option.

Most of these are free and they are a good starting point for a business person looking to play around with a blog.

“If you are going to do it for your business you should really make some kind of commitment. The problem I see is if you are going to actually put your business blog up there, it won't reflect very well on you if you are not going to actually blog. If you are not sure what you want to do then maybe you are better off . . . trying something out on personal level. Play around with that. See how you get on and if you are happy with it move on from there,” said Neylon.

Edelman's Kelly uses Wordpress for his blogs and he said creating posts on it is “literally like writing an e-mail.”

Blacknight's Neylon recommended using Typepad, which is geared towards business blogging and allows users to point their domain at it.

Blogger is also very popular and it links into the Google suite of applications.

Business people can also ask whoever hosts their website if they can set up a blogging domain for them. This will make it even easier for customers to find a newly launched blog.

“You can subscribe to a lot of blogs via RSS. It is a great way of keeping up to date. Rather than having to visit a website al l the time you can subscribe to get all the latest information. People can also subscribe via e-mail and automatically they will receive the latest information from your blog,” said Kelly.

IBM released Lotus Connections in 2007 for businesses that wanted more secure, comprehensive blogging and a social networking service. It is the company's fastest selling software product, to date.

“We have something like 375,000 IBM employees worldwide but there is actually something like 472,000 people on the system,” said Mike Roche, chief architect, Dublin Software Lab with IBM.

“The other 100,000 odd people are made up of business partners and customers. It gives us an opportunity to network with them and share information with them. Lots of people are using things likes LinkedIn and Facebook and Myspace. They are quite happy to contribute to a similar system inside corporate firewalls,” said Roche.

The software can run off a single laptop and users can access its services through any of the main stream browsers. The package is used by organisations operating in insurance, banking, healthcare, education and even the military sectors. Lotus Connections features five key services: Blogs, Profiles, Dogears, Communities and Activities.

The blogs services lets users contribute to the 20,000 plus blogs already on the Connections network. Profiles provides a secure directory of business contacts, similar to those created by LinkedIn and Facebook. This is where a user can find out the contact details and location of person they need to talk to.

Dogears is a corporate version of social bookmarking service offered by the likes of www.Del.icio.us It lets individuals find information, tag it, create links and comments about the information and share it with other users.

For communities or groups of people who are working on similar projects, Activities allows users to manage the range of e-mails, documents and information needed for a particular project, all in a workflow.

“Large corporates are using this to connect their own employee base together. Smaller companies are getting together to partner using some of this software, to form larger entities by combining several small partners to go after business together or to negotiate better deals,” said Roche.

Lotus Connections is jut one of the many blogging and social networking tools available today. If business people apply the same acumen when using web 2.0 communications tools, as they do to other parts of their business, then the rewards will be theirs for the taking.

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