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Business Blogging Pros welcomes Mike Leeds and Pro Sales Coaching as our newest client.
MIke is also the President of AZ Sales Pros. I have known Mike through AZ Sales Pros for a couple of years. Mike's passion is helping professional salespeople be more effective. I have actually been to a couple of Mike's workshops and found them to be very beneficial.
Mike is clearly enjoying blogging
Thanks to Jody Gnant, I am now UStreamer. Ustream allows just about anyone to broadcast live video over the Internet and interact in near realtime with connected viewers using chat. In fact, I am LiveStreaming right now. Tomorrow when I am preparing dinner for a couple of guests, I will be LiveStreaming while I cook. I'm also going to record the video and imbed it into my food blog so that later anyone can learn to prepare Chicken Legs with Raspberry Sauce, Bistro style.
Think about it: Ustream lets anyone with a video camera and an internet connection become a live TV broadcast station. Not only that, the video can be recorded so that anyone can view it at a later date. Webinars anyone? (Granted, my video is not production quality, but I am using just the iSight camera built into my MacBook Pro. Soon I will hook up my Sony Handycam and see what it looks like.)
Back to Jody. I was at the Phoenix Social Media Club meeting Thursday night and Francine Hardaway invited Jody to talk about uStream.
Remember Kyle MacDonald who managed to turn one red paperclip into a house through a series of trades? Jody is a local singer-songwriter and traded with Kyle for a recording contract. Jody began LiveStreaming 24/7 during the creation and promotion of her new CD and has since decided to continue. As a result, she has developed a considerable following, with several thousand 'views' per month.
One phrase she said really struck me. Pointing to her webcam, she said, "Those are real people in there." Most of them are enthusiastic fans. Most of them have bought her music.
I don't want to pontificate, but with guys like Robert Scoble and Shel Israel exited about UStream, I think it is safe to say that it is a great idea. I've already got several ideas about using this with some of my clients.
I was speaking to a group of women entrepreneurs recently and one asked, "Why can't I just use a normal website for this?". Good question.
Conversation
The most important aspect of blogging is that your blog is part of a conversation. A website is a monologue - you talking to your readers. Your blog however, allows your readers to easy talk back to you via comments. The blogging software provides this commenting facility as well as a way for you to manage the comments and institute control over comments.
Easy to Use
The blogging software makes it easy to continually add content and updates (Which gives people a reason to keep coming back). You add an article to your blog by simply entering the text into an online form. Sure, you could update your website just as frequently, but then you have to deal with HTML or have a really cooperative webmaster.
RSS
I talk more about RSS here, but the important thing is that almost all of your regular readers will be reading your blog via RSS - because they are probably reading a bunch of blogs and RSS allows them to keep up with dozens or hundreds of blogs very quickly. Your website most likely doesn't have an RSS feed but the blogging software automatically creates one.
Google Loves Blogs
When you update your website, you may have to wait 4-6 weeks for the Google spyder to get around to finding and indexing your updates. On the other hand, the instant you click that 'Save' button at the bottom of your blog's 'Compose New Post' page it pokes Google and your updates are indexed almost immediately. I've seen blog posts show up on Google 45 minutes after they were written.
Image
Even with something like 121 million blogs out there, having one is still seen as leading edge.
Podcasting
Wanna do a podcast at publish it on iTunes? There is no easier way to do that than through a blog. In fact, if you have your blog's RSS feed hooked up through Feedburner then it's almost automatic.
Other reasons
There are other reasons too. You can configure your blog to actually also be your website. Doing so allows you to leverage the blog's great content management features to allow you to easily create and maintain your website.
Eileen Proctor - One of Phoenix's most respected, visible and accomplished local entrepreneurs - and I have teamed up to present a two-hour seminar on business blogging. We will show you how to use blogging to gain visibility and parlay your knowledge and opinions into being viewed as an an expert in your field.
I had the pleasure of appearing on Eileen's radio show, KFNN's Small Business Power Hour where we discussed blogging. Out of that session, the idea for this seminar was born.
For more information click here.
To register click here.
Remember the Chrysler TC? It was supposed to be Chrysler's image-building flagship. Lee Iococca had it built in Milan, Italy and tried to convince us it was a Maserati. Savvy American consumers were not fooled: Underneath the Italian leather and nice wheels it was just the same old K-car - a Chrysler LeBaron with a thirty-thousand dollar price tag.
So it is with a lot of businesses these days. Only instead of some fancy Italian leather or expensive wheels, they put up a blog. By doing so, and spouting a few social media buzzwords, they presume that their reputations will be transformed and the pubic will suddenly see them as honest, open, responsive, and customer-focused companies.
It doesn't work that way. The blogosphere - and people in general - are smarter than that. It doesn't take very many interactions to discover that under all that fancy social media upholstery, it's still the same old company that thinks things would run much smoother if its pesky customers would simply shut up and go away.
My favorite word associated with blogging is 'conversation'. My second favorite word is 'disruption'. That's because for many companies, truly listening to their customers - and then taking action based upon what they hear - is too much of a disruption. It’s easier to keep doing things the way they’ve always done them and ignore the complaints, input - and sometime insults - being hurled over the wall.
Delta Airlines is a perfect example. In a recent blog post, David Meerman Scott wrote about his experience with Delta. They not only ruined his family's vacation, Delta's automated email system then proceeded to make matters worse.
Now you would think that a company of Delta's size that was truly customer-focused would have mechanisms in place to monitor the web to detect anytime its company name is mentioned. I do it. I teach every one of my clients to do it. Heck, some of them even pay me to do it for them. We understand that if you reach out to that unhappy client quickly, you can not only avoid the problem 'going supernova' as Robert Scoble puts it, you can actually turn that unhappy customer into an enthusiastic fan.
Did anyone at Delta reach out to David? Nope. And the number of comments to David's blog post continues to grow with other people adding their own personal horror stories about Delta. (I refrained from adding the story of my own 'adventure' with Delta last fall.) Is it a surprise then that when you type "Delta Airlines" into Google, one of the entries on the first page of results is "DeltaReallySucks.com".
Now it so happens that Delta has recently started a blog. There is a lot of content related to improving Delta’s website and check-in kiosks and such. And the Delta employee bloggers charged with dealing with those topics seem genuinely interested in making them better. In the airline business however, websites and kiosks are just the leather upholstery. When it comes to really listening where it counts - getting passengers and their luggage to their destinations on time - Delta’s blog is no more responsive than its gate agents. Here is a comment on the Delta blog from an unhappy customer:
"In summary, here you have someone who has been loyal to [Delta] for years and years and is being pushed away by what I believe is nothing more than squeezing every penny of profit out of every seat-mile dollar. There is a limit to what you can take for profit, without biting the hand that feeds. In this case, I have been bitten one too many times."
The Delta blogger’s response was:
While I appreciate the direct feedback, I am not in a position to resolve specific customer issues."
Some companies do get it. Hugh MacLeod, a fellow blog strategy consultant recently retained by Microsoft, recently wrote:
"From some of the recent talks I've had with Microsoft, I'm starting to see more and more people internally beginning to believe a simple truth: That if Microsoft wishes to change the world, then changing themselves is also, most definitely, a big part of the equation."
Another company who gets it is Dell. It all started with that famous 'Dell Hell' post on Jeff Jarvis' blog. Dell initially ignored Jeff. The comments started pouring in. Dell suffered an enormous financial disaster. Then Dell started to blog. I remember reading Dell's blog in those early days and you could almost smell the tar and feathers. Much to Dell's credit, they left all the negative stuff up there. Better yet, they listened. And responded. In contrast to Delta's response to an unhappy customer, here is the Dell blogger's response to a recent unhappy customer:
"I'm sorry for the frustration we have caused. I do care and can say there are lots of people working here who feel the same way. I've asked someone from our Customer Service to contact you so that we can work through this situation."
All of us business owners need to heed this lesson. When you start blogging, don't just put fancy Italian leather in the same old car. Be willing to air your dirty laundry. If you've discovered that some aspect of your product or service doesn't perform very well, admit it. Then talk about how you are going to fix it. Then fix it.
If a customer uses your blog to lodge a complaint, don't metaphorically hide in your office. In fact, pray that someone brings you a legitimate complaint. First of all, that means your blog is working and your clients see you as open, honest, and willing to listen. Once that happens you will uncover problems in your business that you never realized you had. And you can fix them. And your customers will love you for it.
Blogging is disruptive. Have the cojones to use that disruption to make your company better. Your customers deserve it. Your Employees deserve it. You deserve it. Be a Dell, not a Delta.
