PR Communications

Wiki Trip Schedule On the Amazon Web Services Blog

The Amazon Web Services team runs a blog, and also a wiki, the Amazon Web Services Evangelists wiki. The wiki lists the trips the team is making around the US and globe. The wiki also lists potential trips, and readers can post suggestions for groups where the services team might consider speaking. This is a great use of wikis for scheduling.

Important New Feature In coComment Allows Global Tag Searching

Caterpillar: Who are YOU?
Alice: This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. I -- I hardly know, sir, just at present -- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

Alice and the Caterpillar - from Alice in Wonderland

coComment, a blog comment tracking service that enables a blogger to keep track of their blog comments post updated recently. The service also determines if other people have main additional comments to a comment thread in a blog post without having to return to the blog. coComment has a slightly new look, which in part requires the user to make more click thrus to find information, this means from a usability standpoint I think the upgrade has made the application less user friendly. However, the service does have some important additional functions that make coComment a service to consider for anyone interested in blogging.

coComment allows you to tag each comment you make, you tag the comment when you are notifying the service while typing your comment on a blog post. In the old version of coComment you were only able to see the comments with tags that had been tagged by the most coComment users, this was frustrating because you were not able to find the tags that were not extremely popular. The coComment upgrade now allows you to search through all tags posted by coComment members. So if I was searching for the tag "corporateblogging", I'd be able to find all conversations related to this discussion. This one new feature adds tremendous value to coComment, as blog searchers now have another way of finding content in blog comments. Many RSS feed search engines such as Technorati do not index comment content, or do not index most blog comment content and blog comments are in part are what blogging is all about, two way conversation, I have found many great articles on blogs through search engines, but I'd also found even better discussions in the comment section of a blog article, coComment's new tag search feature is an important additional feature for finding content on blogs.

Here's coComment's overview of the new features in this important upgrade to the coComment service.

1. MY COCOMMENT (Your personal page with overview of your conversations, your community and what's hot in the conversational space)
2. MY CONVERSATIONS (Updates on your conversations and the ones from your friends, groups, favorites plus invitations sent by your buddies to join interesting conversation)
3. MY COMMUNITY (Your friends, groups, favorites, followers and conversational neighbors)
4. MY GROUPS (Starting point to share conversations by interest, only with selected people (private) or extend interactions for your audience)
5. SIDEBAR (Navigate efficiently from any one conversation to another)
6. COMMENT ANYWHERE (Start a conversation on any webpage, comment on and share with your community interesting information anywhere on the web)

Finding Strawberry Yogurt

Stonyfield Farm yogurt is a favorite of mine, but for the last year I have found it virtually impossible to find the Strawberry yogurt flavor of Stonyfield Farm yogurt in a large tub. Tonight I hit jackpot and found at least 10 tubs at my local grocery store. I'd heard there was a shortage of organic milk, yet there always appeared to be other flavors available what about the strawberry flavor yogurt, why was it not available?

Stonyfield Farm runs a few blogs, one about healthy babies and the other about organic farming. The company was one of the first non-technology brands to start a blog. Stonyfield Farm runs two blogs and the Bovine Bugle run by one of Stonyfield Farm's organic farmers is the one to read.

The Stonyfield Farm blogs were featured in the blogging success study I produced with Northeastern University last year.

Corporate Blogging And Customer Service

What better PR to generate than solving a customer's problem in the light of public view? That's one of the biggest opportunities that corporate blogging gives to companies: the ability not only to communicate one on one with customers and solve their problems, but also to demonstrate to a wider audience that a company can solve a problem within a reasonable amount of time and to show how the company handles an issue. This is one reason why I think that more and more companies will start using customer service blogs for solving customer service issues and also generating good PR.

Michael Rubin From The NetFlix Blog Interview

Michael Rubin runs the NetFlix Blog and I recently had the opportunity to ask him about how he uses the blog for product development and customer feedback. I thought he wrote and exceptionally well written answer.

John: I really wanted to focus on how you intend to use the blog for product and service development. What content strategies do you intend to use, or have used that you expect will get feedback from customers?

Michael: The blog feels like a high bandwidth line of connectivity between people who use the site and we - the folks building the site. It bypasses Customer Service, it jumps over Public Relations, it plugs right into engineering and development. That makes it very pure.

We have many ways of building our intuition about what to build and how it should work. We do lots of more formal research and testing, we have a lot of experience to bring to the table. We're also all really big movie fans who like talking about movies. It all swirls into a dynamic team who have one goal and that is to make the site as good as it can be, and listening to customers is our obligation and joy.

Statistically meaningful testing is important, but there is something quite powerful about the idiosyncratic experience of our blog readers.
They catch our mistakes sometimes. They articulate problems or wishes -- often items we ourselves have been thinking about for some time, often items we are debating internally, but sometimes all it takes is a different vantage point, a phrase, a hint of something that makes an idea click -- that either helps us in our thinking or, in some cases, is a kind of deciding vote when we're on the fence. More information is always better, and we listen to our customers in a wide variety of venues -- and the blog is simply one more. I think it's a good one.

We do have a filter we must process everyone's comments with: the blog readers are not a random sampling of our millions of subscribers. From a data standpoint they are self-selected, and very much unlike the bulk of our users in many ways -- they are more interested, they may be more technically savvy, they may be younger or bigger movie fans... or whatever -- but all that is to say they are not a representative sample.

This isn't bad. It just means they don't always speak for everyone. But they do know a lot, and care a lot, and provide very good debate and information. I value their input and we simply have to remind ourselves each day they are one point of data and not the only point of data.

Sometimes this group sort of "gangs up" on you, they all agree with each other about some feature or another and it is dangerous to be swayed too much by their clear strong voice. We must always remind ourselves that their ideas are good for people like them, but may or may not be good for everyone. This is hard, particularly, because WE are like them.

We who work here are Netflix power users. We know the site well, can handle lots of complexity, LOVE movies, and so on -- just like our blog readers. But we have a business and social obligation to consider the
experience of those who don't read the blog, don't have 100 movies in their Queues, and still love the service. It must work for them too, and they aren't always represented among the majority in the blog comments.

We are the ones who must change hats constantly. It takes discipline and sometimes a thick skin. In the end, power users and novices alike need the service to work for all of us to "win."

When you say "content strategies" -- wow, that feels awfully formal. The blog isn't strategic in that way. It's not a company tool. It's MY tool. I'm the blogger. I don't communicate with the marketing or PR or communications parts of the company. I just ask questions I want to hear answers to, I talk about what's on my mind, what is going on, and what my experience is. I suppose as an employee it can seem like I am a spokesman, but I'm not -- not close. I am a writer and an educator before all other things, and I can't stop this thing that makes me want to communicate about what is going on. It makes my job both easier and more enjoyable. So I blog.

The team who make the website (and I think I will speak for my partners here), we get data EVERYWHERE. Talking with friends, standing at parties, sitting on planes, wandering around the Sundance Film festival and at Web 2.0 conferences. We talk about what we are doing, but more importantly, we listen to people who have their own story to tell about
Netflix. In that sense, the blog is just one more avenue – highly efficient to manage, data-rich, mutually beneficial and kinda neat. Until it becomes a chore, or produces no useful dialog, I will continue to employ it as my "strategy" to help in the design of the site.

The Next Stage In Website Design

A large content management software company has contacted me to talk at their conference in Boston later this year. The company would like me to talk about blogging. As I was chatting with the VP of marketing I thought it would be interesting to discuss how to build an effective blog, but also discuss how blogging elements are and will influence the future design of traditional websites. The use of websites to market a company is changing, people are realizing that a website does not have to be a static, rather it is possible to use comment boxes to allow customers and prospects to comment on the context you publish on your website. You can also use other elements of social media technology in a traditional company website. Wiki's, forums, and digg like functions as a way to generate conversation and interaction with customers

Is Marketing Advertising?

Is marketing advertising? Many people do not understand the real definition of marketing and as a consequence marketing basically becomes an attempt at advertising. Many of the jobs I have taken in the profession mentioned the process of marketing, and a reference was made at marketing research, but in the reality of meeting payroll and immediate profits listening to the customer was second to selling what we had already. Yet every time I've listened to customers and built a service or product they actually wanted I've been able to sell it. Should the profession of marketing be redefined in many instances as advertising? Perhaps we should return to the job titles of the 1930's where director of advertising was a comment job description. I personally don't believe many companies really understand what marketing is really is about. One reason I've been attracted to blogging and social media is that the strategy is much more aligned with the concept of marketing than traditional advertising. The two-way communication process available in social media means that marketing is a natural part of social media, while advertising is just one-way communication. What do you think, would you ask your boss to change your job title if you were not doing marketing but advertising?

Is Social Media A Public Relations Tool?

Adam Denison made a comment on my last post about social media, and believes that social media should be strictly a public relations tool. I could not agree that social media is just a public relations tool. And by asking that question I wonder how you define social media, and how companies can use social media to communicate with customers? I certainly believe that public relations strategy can play a big role in how you develop a social media communications strategy. I think many disciplines can provide tactics and strategies for a successful implementation of social media by a company, including: Marketing, product marketing, development, customer service, journalism as well as public relations.

Adam also asked the question,

"If so, how do you best work with marketing folks to make sure they don't use social media as another marketing channel?"

this question assumes that marketing is all about a sales and advertising strategy. The concept of marketing can be defined as the process of understanding the needs and wants of customers, so that a company can satisfy those needs and wants efficiently and profitably. This to me is actually what social media is all about as social media involves the participation of the audience in co-creating content, similarly marketing is all about listening and understanding what customers actually want and need. Now, many, many companies believe that marketing is really advertising, the process of having a product, and then trying to sell that product as much as possible. That is definitely part of marketing, but does not tell the whole story. Where do you think the term marketing research comes from? Marketers who really understand how to implement marketing, and understand the concept of brand embrace social media tools; it frees us to follow the marketing concept to its logical conclusion.

How To Build A Social Media Community

Four approaches you must take if you are going to successfully build a community in the world of social media.

* User participation - This is not just about building the best product, though that's important, but it’s also about turning ordinary customers and developers into evangelists. After all once you help build a product you are committed to promoting it, as it's partly yours.

* Highlight and support evangelists - Expect the unexpected, your audience may take your product in new and different places, but be supportive of their efforts, if you are supportive others will see what you do and join in.

* No more marketing promotion - the biggest turn off in this type of community is a marketing shill. Trust comes from credibility and authenticity. Let your own people, and your developers criticize your efforts, if the criticism is correct, agree with them and move on, if wrong argue your case reasonably, remember everyone's goal is to produce the best software, if not all you are trying to do is sell something.

* Dialogue - Probably the most important factor in web 2.0 or open source marketing, conduct dialogue with your community, but go one step beyond this and encourage dialogue between the community, become the resource for the community. Set up the Collaborative software wiki as a resource for the entire community. Update wikipedia with information that's not just about your own products. Give leaders in the industry a place to talk and communicate. If you conduct a dialogue you will succeed with your own product, but if you encourage dialogue you will help to found the industry.