Book: Naked Conversations | Authors:
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Cities:
Source: Wiley
Publication: Book / Nonfiction
Publication Date: 2006
Keywords: blogs, business blogs, blogging, corporate culture, public relations, conversation, microsoft
Disciplines: blogging, communications, public relations
Findings
- Blogs are indispensable to corporate communications
- Businesses have benefited from blogging
- Not conversing with customers is perceived as not respecting customers
- Hapless immediate honesty beats refined delayed comments
- Conversation beats press releases
- People want to be part of the process
- The politics of inclusion are real
One Sentence Summary
Blogging offers businesses a real-time view of customers needs, likes, and opinions; avoiding the conversation willfully alienates businesses from their customers.
One Paragraph Review
Business is evolving from a paternalistic relationship where customers get
what they are given by companies that make decisions for them to a cooperative
relationship where customers and companies collaborate on products and services. Scoble and
The surface
message of Naked Conversations is simple: As we move forward, businesses are
becoming expected to blog. Lack of
blogging is an indication of companies that do not wish to have a dialog with
their customers. That indication is
perceived as condescending and is being shunned more often by customers.
Scoble and Israel identify
multiple companies or employees that have blogged and the results for
them. Some companies have seen great
benefits and have avoided public relations disasters through effective
blogging. Other people have lost their
jobs or angered their clients. The book
provides several guidelines and what to or not to do when blogging as a
professional.
Most interesting
from me from a cooperation standpoint are two elements: Viral Marketing and Gaming.
Viral Marketing
In the book,
they say:
Blogging [is] the sex god of the Information Age. While word of mouth has always been the most credible way to expand awareness and adoption, blogging fits into all this as the most powerful word-of-mouth delivery mechanism to date. As Yossi Vardi told us, “Blogging is word of mouth on steroids.”
Viral marketing
requires a company to initiate an event and then customers to pass the word
along about that event. In order for
customers to pass word along they have to feel something about the event. There has to be some shared passion between
corporation and consumer. With blogging,
that passion is more probable because companies and consumers are directly
interacting. A blog post that would have
been “The new Argyle MP3 player is okay, but chews up batteries,” becomes,
“I’ve been using the Argyle MP3 player for a few weeks. When I first got it I thought it was really a
nice unit. But I noticed that it ran
through batteries like crazy. On the
Argyle blog they asked how people liked it, I mentioned the battery thing. They clued me in to these great rechargeable
Lithium Ion batteries that let it run for over 20 hours!”
That exchange is
cooperative. The product came out, users
had a way to have a direct and low-cost conversation, and what was a potential
annoyance for users has been turned into a plus.
Gaming
Blogging is
primarily about conversation and recognition.
Speaking in a vacuum will garner few listeners. Conversation happens whether you want it to
or not. These are all very positive.
Gaming however
is a major focus for businesses.
Businesses want to become part of the conversation to sell more
stuff. In the end, that’s the primary
focus for business blogging. In light of
that, wanting to become part of the conversation can be seen as gaming it.
Your victory
conditions for the game is to build a network of information dissemination and
satisfied customers that will support you should things sour. Businesses will rarely blog as a public
service.
In any game,
sustainability of the game requires adherence to certain rules. The rules of blogging involve ethical and
frequent transmission of information.
Scoble and Israel
describe events where companies have willfully gamed the system by creating
false personalities who blog, blogged directly about their products, or
invented information.
However, the
case can be made that any intentionally corporate blogging is gaming the
blogging network. Scoble and Israel say that
most bloggers are somewhat inoculated against such false messages – but few can
be truly immune.
Technorati Tags: naked conversations, scoble, shel israel, blogs, blogging, cooperation
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