Liz Strauss.com

Another client asked me this morning, “Do you think that customers are blogging about our products?’

“It was a year late to market. It’s a tech product. I not only think so. I think they’re having quite a conversation.”

“Can you find out what they’re saying?”

“Sure I can. Be happy to. Do it right away and get back to you.”

I’m becoming an investigator.

The client will have the report by tomorrow.

Maybe that’s what the first step needs to be — making folks aware that the conversation is real and is happening.

With or without their participation.

Customers want to talk about their experiences.

Liz Strauss

What confuses most organizations when they consider blogging is that they don’t have enough of the right information to make a decision that is fully informed. Swayed by the grassroots conversation about blogs, folks often confuse the messages blogs carry with what blogs are and can be.

This is the same as confusing paper with what’s written on it.

Blogs Are a Tool, Not a Message

Blogs are a powerful tool, a content management system, that is more dynamic and interactive than a website, and more inexpensive, visible, and far-reaching than print will ever be. They are a venue, that works in addition to a direct mail campaign, a catalogue, a website, or an exhibit presence. They add to the marketing plan depth and dimension that is missing when a blog is not there. The blog does not stand alone in an organizational environment, but rather adds flexibilty and dimension to what is already there.

Just where does a blog fit? It fits in the center. To use an analogy a blog can take on the role of the news anchor. As all other parts of the plan do their specialized roles, the blog is the face of the company that the customer sees every day in the same place at the same time when they turn on their computer. In that way the blogger has the chance to update customers on industry news, product changes and any issues that have occurred. The blogger can ask questions to find out what is the news in their world.

The blogger becomes the centerpiece of the marketing and public relations plan — the channel through which information flows freely in both directions.

That is the part that is missing from almost every marketing plan that I’ve ever worked on or read. The automatic channel for free flowing information in both directions. Until now, it was almost impossible to find an inexpensive way that it could be done. Unfortunately, now people are having trouble believing that there is a value in having such information or that it can be done.

Don’t find yourself thinking that just because we didn’t do it . . . we shouldn’t be doing it now.

–Liz Strauss

Over at the Work Better Blog Don Norman is quoted as saying

“Psychologists depersonalize the people they study by calling them ’subjects.’ We depersonalize the people we study by calling them ‘users.’ Both terms are derogatory. They take us away from our primary mission: to help people.” - Don Norman

It’s sad that people have to be told this. Anyone who writes should know this.

My son knew that when he was three.

I said to him, “C’mon kid, let’s go get something to eat.”

He said to me. “I’m not a kid. I’m a people.”

Were taught as children not to call people names, that it is impolite and demeans them. Yet we grow and forget the lesson.

Liz Strauss

You know how it works. Something is happening in one part of your life and suddenly you become attuned to it everywhere — a new sensitivity. It may be that you just discovered gardening, and you notice your city has flowers in tiny and uniqiue places. Maybe a loved one is about to have surgery, and it seems every movie is about doctors and hospitals.

I had it happen in a more subtle, but similar fashion. An enlightening moment with one client showed itself to be true for all of them.

The Communication Breakdown

I was talking to a client about their communication breakdown between the in-house product folks and the folks in the field working with customers. You may find it familiar. The two groups look with suspicion at their counterparts’ willingness to learn how the world really works. My client can’t find a venue or person to bridge this gap in their product-to-market structure, and so they are left with

• folks in the building who know product, but can’t close a sale
• folks in the field who know customers, but not product detail
• folks who only meet customers as experts, because that’s the only time they’re invited
• folks who rarely offer perspective on product, because their expertise is discounted
• customers voices get left behind, because of the gap in communication
• customers talk to each other about their experience with the company and the product, but the company rarely hears them

The communication breakdown is a significant problem. Folks are trying to sell without product knowledge and their counterparts are talking to customers products without an ability to close the deal. Sadly, each group doesn’t respect the strengths of the other. So teamwork is attempted, but not driven by passion.

They’re Having the Conversation Without You

After my dialogue with the client above, I returned to my work on a fall seminar that I’m putting together. It’s a day for product and marketing folks on how to tap into the vibrant and rich resource of customer intimacy that is the Internet.

I found myself doing a quick search on that client. What I got back was page after page of blog entries about the client’s product. Customers were talking about how they used it and how they felt about the product and the client. About half of the blog posts I came across in ten minutes were positive. I collected the links and passed them on to my client. Then I called him with this basic message:

Your customers are having the conversation with or without you. Wouldn’t you like to be part of it? Not only would the whole company know more about your products, but this could be the bridge that would level the playing field between product and sales. Neither one could feel quite so . . . if they both have the same information.

That client will be blogging quite soon. The links I sent were very powerful evidence of the conversation he was missing out on. Now he doesn’t just want to listen, he wants a part in directing it.

Suddenly that new sensitivity I talked about earlier seemed to take over. I realized that many companies I know have the same exact problem.

–Liz Strauss