The Corporate Blog Manifesto Update

This is a guest post from one of the great Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketers on my team, Don Nelson. He often has insightful emails and this time I asked if I can post it on my blog.

Quick background - this email was actually a response to someone who sent a link out to Robert Scoble's post from 2003, "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto" and I thought it was worth sharing so here you go:

Just in case you jump right into the content and not see the date of this posting.....Scoble wrote this in 2003 which pretty much makes it a dinosaur in Internet time. However, there are still good points to be made here in 2009.

My take is this....

1. Tell the truth: always always always. If you're not sure, best to leave it out of your writing all together.
2. Post fast on good news or bad: it is after all about communicating with our customers and the influencers in the many markets and industries we now play in.
3. Use a human voice: we're all on the honor system of sticking to corporate and ethics, so hopefully you know which lines not to cross.
   
4. Make sure you support the latest sw/web/human standards: technically, not so much these days with our Blog platform. we already have RSS and try to instill the proper use of keywords for search engine optimization.
5. Have a thick skin: opinions and elbows - everyone has them and they will use them so be prepared for all manner of responses to your writing
6. Don't ignore Slashdot: there is much more beyond just Slashdot these days. we do keep social media monitoring in our pockets and try to do as much as we can with what we've got to help guide you in the conversations out there.
7. Talk to the grassroots first: base your writings on established concepts and leadership and you should be fine. It doesn't hurt to know or build relations with a broad range of sources that you can read and interact with via your blog but know that PR is also handling relation building here too.
8. If you screw up, acknowledge it: as clear as it can be word for word
9. Underpromise and over deliver: excellent strategy and should be used at every opportunity
10. If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it: I had to look him up so I'm thinking so did you there are many "experts" so I'd extend this to those you know based on level of influence you think they have in any particular market.
11. Know the information gatekeepers:
12. Never change the URL of your weblog
    
13. If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write: true. unless you can turn the turmoil/unhappy experience into something that relates to your company fixing it for you!
14. If you don't have the answers, say so: same as #1 and #8, true to the last word
15. Never lie: see #1, #8 and #14
16. Never hide information: disclose disclose disclose where appropriate or just don't write about it
17. If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast: similar to #1, #8, #14 and #15, when in doubt leave it out of your writing or pursue our legal contacts if unavoidable.
18. Link to your competitors and say nice things about them: true to an extent. now partners and ecosystem partners, they should be acknowledged/credited when it directly impacts your writing.
19. BOGU (Bend Over and Grease Up): true also to an extent. more simply stated, if someone comments on your writing, treat them all as if they are VIPs
20. Be the authority on your product/company: you are all experts, but do pay proper respects to whom you know and/or reference in your writing.
    

Pulse on the Blogosphere

The Military Counter Attack Plan for Bloggers
Who knows how to protect and defend better than the Air Force? Well they are not only protecting our country but they are also protecting their blog and they have a detailed flow chart to determine their every move.

Friends for Burgers?
That's Burger King's new message with their Facebook app that promotes giving away a Whopper when you delete 10 of your friends. Now that is an expensive burger if you ask me! Check out other anti-social Facebook apps here.

Intel's Show & Tell
Intel's published their Social Media Guidelines for everyone to see. If you're trying to figure out what your guidelines are this may be a good place to shortcut your process.

Media on Twitter
This isn't acutally a blog post but a great reasource. If you're using Twitter as a communication channel to reach the media this Wiki page lists all the top dogs! A must for your PR department.

Running a Blog Like a Newspaper

When it comes to running a corporate blog I think we can all learn from Molly Mulally, Marketing Manager at Abrevity. They didn’t just jump into the blogosphere blindly; they had clear, achievable objectives in mind: increase web traffic, demonstrate industry leadership and build a following of readers who are interested in learning about the industry (not just Abrevity).

The Abrevity blog provides a platform for Molly and her team to quickly and easily generate new content used for educating customers and partners. For an emerging industry like data classification, this allows Abrevity to demonstrate both domain expertise and legitimacy in the market.

However the “why” is not what sets them apart from most blogging companies – it’s the “how”. Molly manages her blog team like a newspaper editor. There are deadlines, word counts, editorial meetings, and assignments. The team of six bloggers meets weekly to discuss upcoming story possibilities and each blogger is expected to write one post a week on a topic in which they are considered a subject matter expert. This does not only ensure that the Abrevity blog has a constant flow of fresh content but that the different facets of the market are covered by an ‘expert’.

Molly also considered how they would participate and have a voice on other industry blogs. To keep a pulse on the market, each of the bloggers has a list of blogs they follow as well as Google alerts set up based on their subject matter expertise and they are encouraged to comment on other blogs as appropriate. To make things fun there is an incentive to participate in other blogs – each week, the blogger with the most comments gets a free lunch. Oh and Molly thought of everything, “Hey great post” does not count – comments must have ‘substance’ and add value to the conversation. To keep track of the conversations they have across the team there is a tracking sheet created which is updated and managed weekly.

It’s been just two months since the launch of the Abrevity blog and the ROI is already apparent. Molly has been able to track and identify the blog as a source doubling Abrevity's web traffic and collateral downloads and a noticeable uptake in sales leads since starting the program.

Molly’s recommendation to those looking to start a blog is, “Do your research, and don’t start too ambitiously. Start with realistic posting deadlines and how many posts a day (ie. one a day vs. one a week).” However my advice is to seriously consider following her process and run your blog like a newspaper!

To Blog or Not to Blog?

With only 54 of the Fortune 500 companies blogging, this is a question still being pondered by many. Cisco, HP and Intel are in that blogging minority and Reem Abeidoh of Problogger interviewed me, Tac Anderson of HP and Michael Brito of Intel to come up with A Guide to Corporate Blogging.

Ryan McLean commented on the post stating, "I don't think I will ever be in a fortune 500 company. But if I ever am then this post will come in handy." I agree with Reem's response that despite the company size "ultimately the process is very similar." And although I represented the Cisco blog in this interview I have helped build blogging strategies for many small companies and have followed the same process successfully. So whether you're coming from a big or small company this guide is a must read!

Tac, Michael and myself are also contributors to the Conversations Matter blog.

CORRECTION: Reem is not a Problogger staff member, she is a Social Media Strategist for Outrider.

Web 2.0 Expo - Friday Session Wrap-Up

I wasn't able to make it the Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday but I was there all day Friday and attended a few good sessions. But it was Friday after a long week so I apologize for the delay in getting this post up but here are my key takeaways:

Keynote: Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs
This guy is hilarious and he authors an entertaining blog from the perspective of Steve Jobs (on crack). He talked about how and why he started the blog and why he thinks it works. In the end it boils down to boredom, fear, an idea, and an engaged audience.

Boredom because it started as a prank that happened to take on a life of its own. Fear because as a traditional Forbes tech writer he saw print publications coming to an end due to the emergence of blogs. An idea - "what would Steve Jobs write if he really did go nuts?" And an engaged audience that included 90K monthly readers after just 6 months and 25-50 emails a day with suggestions on what to write next.

Games 2.0: Why the Future of Games Looks More Like Zombies and Scrabulous and Less Like Halo 3
This session ended up being a little different than what I expected but what was interesting is that while social networking sites are trying to deploy game dynamics in their communities as discussed in the 'Children of Flickr' session, game sites are trying to embed social relationships and social context into games.

The Audience is the Medium: Video 2.0 & Online Communities
I was a little late to this session but joined in on the debate of Live vs. On-Demand video. Live events have a higher interaction and allow viewers to be part of the conversation. BUT...the web is not equip to handle live video distribution and advertisers look at the big numbers as oppose to engagement. Ultimately there's a place for both and the decision needs to be made based on the objective.

The Power of Online Communities: Lessons from the Best of the Consumer & Business Community Managers
This session included community managers from SFDC, Dell, Yahoo!, Kiva and Flickr. Here are a few things worth passing on:

• SFDC put the responsibility of their community into the hands of their product managers by making it part of their job to create, encourage and maintain conversations for their product.
• Kiva lucked out and avoided formal marketing all together. They grow 100% organically through word of mouth - but a big part of this was knowing and connecting with the right people.
• Flickr suggests being 'elastic' and don't just try to make your audience do what you want them to do.
• When building a community create a feedback mechanism. Don't just listen - engage.
• When hiring a community manager look for someone with relationship building and communication skills - PR background a plus. Also someone who authors their own blog or possibly someone in your community.

Best-kept Secrets to Search Engine Optimization Success: the Art and the Science
This was a session on Wednesday that I attended but didn't have good notes for. This guy - Stephan Spencer - really knows his stuff but it was hard to keep up. Luckily he made his slides available and you can view them here:

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Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

This morning I co-presented with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association's (SVAMA) networking breakfast. We shared the strategy, tactics and lessons learned from the recent Cisco ASR 1000 product launch where we leveraged interactive and social tools as well as social media outlets including Facebook, Second Life, blogs and discussion forums to spread its marketing message.

Here are the slides from our presentation:

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Pulse on the Blogosphere

StumbleUpon Takes the Social Bookmarking Lead
I can't say I'm surprised but StumbleUpon wins the ProBlogger popularity contest with 40% of the vote, del.icio.us had 21% and Digg had 19%. Are you still trying to figure out how to get 'stumbled'? Read The Guide.

Blogger Tips - How to Get Noticed
Whether your a new blogger or an old timer this quick post with three main tips is worth a read. If you looking for more ideas to gain popularity check out this top 50 list. Once you start putting these tips to work you'll want to measure your success right? Well check out this post for a good framework for for success.

Adobe Wants You to Share
Sharing, collaborating and doing it online is the trend of the decade and Adobe surely can't be left out in the cold. Their new web service - Adobe Share - allows you to share docs online. Check out this post for a product review and product comparison.

MySpace Follows in Facebook's Footprints
On Tuesday MySpace launched it's own developer site allowing anyone to build apps onto their platform. Is it too little too late? I don't think so but we'll just have to wait and see...

Reputation Marketing
What a great post by Paul Dunay - this one liner sums it up "A reputation that took decades to build can be threatened by a single event." Read his post for a three-step approach to that could save your reputation.

Can You Handle the Truth?
Matt Dickman doesn't think so and I have to agree - the biggest challenge corporations have with Social Media is letting go because they are afraid this "truth" will surface. What they fail to realize is that they are already surfaced. Ok, let me stop before I get on a rant - check out Matt's post for suggestions on how to get your social media feet wet.

Whole Foods 'CYA' Blog Policy - Don't Do it Or Else...

Back in July Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught making inflammatory comments about a potential acquisition target and arguing optimistically for his own company under a pseudonym on a financial message board. He later apologized for his actions and slipped quietly back into corporate obscurity, albeit with a lot of egg on his face.

This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen social networking like forums or blogging get someone in trouble, and you can bet it won’t be the last. The interesting thing to watch here is how these mistakes are handled afterwards. The Whole Foods example is such a good one because we’re able to see exactly what he did, exactly what the public consequences were, and now, exactly how his company is dealing with it.

Whereas most of the attention will continue to be paid to corporate blogging and it’s risks and rewards, not as much attention is given to the fact that the advent of social networking means that all of a company’s employees now have a public identity, and like it or not these people and their opinions will absolutely reflect on the company they work for.

In John Mackey’s case, Whole Foods is following what looks like a pretty vanilla “CYA” plan of protecting themselves from something like this happening again. According to Terrence Russell of Wired, a source close to the matter says, “company executives can no longer post on blogs, message boards, or chat rooms about company matters -- anonymous or otherwise.”

Unfortunately for Whole Foods and other companies following the head in the sand strategy, they’re not only fighting a losing battle but it’s a battle they shouldn’t be fighting anyway. In previous posts I’ve mentioned the wisdom of enabling and educating your employees rather than muzzling them but apparently one lesson in risk was enough to set the table at Whole Foods. As I see it there are two big problems with what they’re doing:

• As customers continue to provide feedback and suggestions online in forums of their own choosing, employees should be empowered to respond and trained to represent the company responsibly.


• As their employees continue to embrace social networking, Whole Foods has just forfeited the voice of their most passionate advocates in the most efficient and effective communications medium in history

These are not easily quantifiable risks, but potential opportunity costs. These problems wouldn’t result in Whole Foods being susceptible to embarrassment and an SEC investigation like Mackey’s faux pas did, but could very well result in them losing touch with their customers, losing market share to competitors and going out of business in a market where razor thin margins are par for the course. It seems like there ought to be some way to mitigate both sets of risks with a well thought out strategy that empowers employees while mitigating risk. Good thing for us companies like Sun are showing us how.

Wal-Mart's Social Media Marketing Transgressions

When it comes to Social Media Marketing there are few failure examples to learn from. Mainly because it's so new but also because many failures get quietly swept under the rug. Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, their mistakes are in the limelight but that gives us the opportunity to learn from them. Here are some pitfalls they could have avoided:

False Transparency - They got caught red-handed for staging thier blog (Wal-Marting Across America) leaving their readers feeling cheated and lied to. The couple who was RVing across the US turned out to be a PR stunt.

Build it and They Will Come Mentality - Last summer Wal-Mart built their own social networking site for teens. Did they really think they could compete head-to-head with MySpace? With more than 3% of their traffic coming from MySpace at that time, why not optimize that relationship and go where the community already exists? Doh! After just 10-weeks the site was taken down...

Obsessed with Control

• Their recent Facebook campaign is anything but open and genuine. If you're going to leverage a social media platform like Facebook you have to be willing to open the kimono. Instead they decided to keep a lock down on comments and disabled the forum feature leaving visitors irritated and upset.
  
• They are now threatening their customers from posting Black Friday ad posts. Why would they go to such extremes - they should be rewarding people who want to talk about them - especially since it's not threatening to their business. Reward your customers for having a voice - don't reprimand them.

This realm of Marketing 2.0 is new for all of us and there will certainly be a trial-and-error period but I think these mistakes could have been avoided with a little research and education. I gotta give Wal-Mart credit for not giving up and at least one attempt has worked - reviews and ratings - let's just hope they can handle the negative reviews. It’s clear though that at this point, they’re not getting it. Marketing 2.0 is about enabling conversations and they don’t seem to be interested in that. Quite the opposite in fact. They’re still acting like it’s a different kind of radio.

Pulse on the Blogosphere

Web 2.0 Puts the Interactive into Interactive Marketing
Great post from Paul Dunay provides a good layman's term definition of Web 2.0 that is right on - the title says it all.

Consumers Trust Online Reviews
It's no surprise that consumer reviews are valuable but knowing that they are considered Very/Somewhat credible 99% of the time stresses the importance of giving customers a voice.

StumbleUpon: The Antithesis of Google?
Although I would compare StumbleUpon with Digg or del.icio.us versus Google I do think this post gives a good definition of StumbleUpon and the value they provide.

8 Marketing Ideas from Facebook Groups
Wondering how you can use Facebook in your marketing plan? Maybe these ideas will get your creative juices flowing. The last idea - Event Related Groups - seems like an easy place to start...

Blogs are not Forums - Making them a Great Marketing Tool
Having had to give this pitch a few times I thought this post does a good job defining the difference between a blog and forum and how these two communication vehicles should be used. In a nutshell forums are a great tool to offset support costs and to get feedback on products while blogs are for conversation and relationship building.

B2B Blogging - Good Example to Learn From

I talked about Sun's blogging policy in a post a couple of weeks ago and how blogging played a major role in increasing their popularity from 99th to 6th. Here I'd like to take a closer look at what they are doing.

Sun has 3614 blogs but this blog is their most popular. Why is this one so special? There are three particular things worth noting:

• There's personality behind it - this is a guy you want to talk to and maybe one you'd like to meet someday.
• His writing has a distinct conversational tone. Notice how he weaves in other people and links to them - this is how people talk through blogs.
• Product mentions - notice how he talks about their products/solutions. It is a Sun blog after all and people aren't expecting them to ignore that fact. As long as it doesn't become a marketing brochure!

You can check out other Sun blogs here.

Blogging for Favorability

Corporate blogs are powerful in so many ways - changing perceptions being one of them. Sun is famous for leveraging the blogosphere for goodness with their open blogging policy which encourages all employees to participate in the blogosphere. Direct communication with customers can be used as damage control if you can show customers the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when a product isn't perfect or thank them for an idea on a feature they hadn't considered. Responding to negative comments and posts offers an outlet to showcase customer service. This communication can convert a naysayer into an enthusiast and research shows that converted critics are the most enthusiastic fans (who doesn't want more fans). Here are two examples where Sun changed the tone of a customer: A Reponse from Sun and Kudos to Jonathan Schwartz - if that's not enough, take this into consideration - according to Jonathan Schwarz, president and CEO of Sun, "blogging has played a major role in the revitalization of Sun's reputation. Sun has gone from the 99th to the 6th most popular server company, largely because it has embraced authenticity and transparency in its communication initiatives”, according to the piece.

If you want tips on how to respond to negative comments and posts check out Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing blog post: A positive response to negative word of mouth.

Sometimes Apple Thinks Too Different - Don't Fall into the Same Trap

The Techno Marketer blog had a great post about changing the rules of the game. In his case he talks about how the remodeled Apple store no longer has a checkout stand - but since they didn't communicate this change customers wrongfully formed in front of the 'Genius Bar' instead. Too different, too fast, and without communication - not good.

Although this is clearly a B2C example I think similar mistakes can be made by B2B companies with all of the hype around Web 2.0. We are still in a transition phase and while RSS is hot and growing it's not a substitute for email (at least not yet). Blog readership is exploding but the global uptake is still lagging. Podcast usage is growing 'tenfold' according to Forrester but they have a ways to go before they can be considered mainstream. The rules of marketing are changing but I’m wary of getting caught up in the hype and abandoning traditional mediums that have served me well. Another reminder that a hybrid approach of old and new approaches is usually the best way to go.

John Mackey Shows Us The Other Side of the Coin

One of the great things about Web 2.0 technology for corporate marketers is that it lets us encourage conversations between our knowledgeable employees and our loyal customers.

One terrifying thing about Web 2.0 technology for corporate marketers is that it enables conversation between our crazy employees and our most sensitive customers/investors/partners.

As much as Whole Foods has been able to take advantage of the new interactivity of the web to build their brand and connect with their customer base – they just got the tables turned as their CEO, John Mackey, was caught posting disparaging remarks about a competitor under a pseudonym in a Yahoo financial forum.

Gee, John, when your marketing department suggested you should be more “public” and do a better job of using the web to talk up the selling points of Whole Foods, we didn’t mean for you to invent a new identity, find a forum, and start trashing the company you’re trying to acquire.

The ramifications of John Mackey’s darker side will be that the FTC, which is already trying to block his purchase of competitor Wild Oats, is going to use his “aggressive” comments to show that he’s trying to suppress competition, etc.

I’m all for executives using wikis and forums and social networking to promote the brand. But is it time for marketing to build a “Rules of the Road” or messaging document to guide them on how not to get persecuted for socializing in a connected world? This is obviously a corner case but it certainly makes you wonder what your executives are saying on their MySpace page.

Building an Online Personality

When it comes to building an online personality we can all learn from the success of Amanda Congdon. This 'badass white girl' has her own daily 3-minute web-based newscast with an audience of more than 300K visitors per day (that's more viewers than some cable TV shows)!

How does she do it? I think the secret is a little bit of humor, a willingness to be edgy but most importantly, a candor that is more Daily Show than 20/20. This takes me back to the bible of social marketing where you can find validation here, “learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about 'listening to customers.' They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf."

This is where the younger generation trumps the older - they haven't been brainwashed with corporate talk and forced to go through an 'approval' process before anything leaves the corporate walls. Up until now we have all been trained to keep a zipped lip when it comes to any flaw or inaccuracy in our messaging but in a transparent world that simply doesn't work. The truth is coming out whether we want it to or not – better to be in that conversation than outside of it.


Adjusting to this new culture won't happen overnight but it will is happening. Denise Caruso, author of Intervention and speaker at Supernova says it best - 'social media is risky but it's riskier not to try.'

Who let the engineers out?

Going back to the Sun / Java FX example shared at Supernova where the product wasn't all that it was promised to be in the eyes of the developer community, Sun handled it right by letting the engineers join these conversations. They were able to admit that they agreed the product wasn't where it needed to be and were able to also share their roadmap and explain positioning. It soon went from a conversation between angry customers and a shifty vendor to a conversation between two people and miraculously the conversation became civil again - wow this stuff really works.

Do you think the rest of the corporate world can learn from that example and let loose like Sun did? I am still hopeful...

The Supernova Blogroll

As you can tell by the date of my first blog I am fairly new to the blogosphere and this is my first event blog. I quickly realized as I was working on my first post that the many bloggers in the room were much more experienced than I was as they were putting out posts one after another in real time. I tried to keep up but realized I'm just not that good yet - so rather than putting out crap I saved all my posts until I had a little more time to put some structure around them (hence all the posts within the last 10-minutes). In any case my point is that there are a lot of experienced bloggers at this event with really great insights on this stuff so check them out:

VirginBrain
Mamamusings
Raph Koster
Abstractioneer
ZapMeals
POP! PR Jots
Walden News & Views
blogTV.com
P2P Information
Ustream.TV
Bag and Baggage
Wonderland
Jason P. DeFillippo
Supernova Conversation Hub

Sorry if I left anyone out - if you're blogging at Supernova feel free to add your blog my adding a comment.

The Changing Forces in Advertising

'The Changing Forces in Advertising' panelists included Deborah Schultz (DRS Solutions), Leszek Izdebski (Cisco), Peter Hirshberg (Technorati), Dick Costolo (Feedburner) Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path), and Evan WIlliams, (Obvious Corp AKA Twitter)

The Marketing Beating Continues

The session continued along the trend that marketers and this time they threw in ad agencies still don't get it 'most of the time.' It was later corrected, or softened to say they do get it but they don't know what to do about it. Instead of understanding that the internet is a different animal they are simply moving traditional advertising concepts online. I have to agree that in my experience I see a lot of that but I also think we are at the beginning of this trend and that a lot of us are clamoring to learn as quickly as possible.

Which leads to the next point, marketers need to be willing to experiment and learn. This is new to all of us and we won't have all of the answers right away. Even Evan Williams of Twitter admits they don't know all of the answers and are still trying to figure out how to monetize it through creative advertising. Leszek Izdebski brings up digital media and one way Cisco is delivering ads by looking at RFID information.

How do you deal with negativity in the market?

When Sun Microsystems launched Java FX they ran banner ads on numerous sites. These ads were negatively received in the community through numerous blog posts because the developer community felt the added features didn't warrant the hype the ads were giving them. Behind the scenes the developers who worked on the product were saying the same thing before the product launched - but rather than being quiet about it they were given free reign to join the conversation. They explained their strategy, shared their roadmap and even asked for feedback. This changed the tone and attitude back to a positive one for Sun. I think more companies can learn from this example and loosen those internal reigns…

Marketers Don't Know How to Blog

That was the general message of the Supernova session I attended today on 'The Relationship Economy.' As I was squirming in my chair trying to hide the marketing title from my badge - I looked to the person next to me who is working on his blog post 'Marketing is bullshit.' Then he asks me (already knowing I'm a marketer) - what do you think? Sadly I had to agree. Marketers have been dragged into the blogosphere by engineers and even in the real world it's isn't marketers who are having conversations with customers, it's Sales. So do marketers even know how to have that conversation?

I think the lesson here is that if your role hasn't been having conversations with customers don't look at the shift on the web as a chance to interrupt that conversation by jumping in. If you want to join the conversation start by listening to what is already being said and try participating that way first - and make sure you have something to say. Or better yet you can continue facilitating the conversation between sales (and now engineers) by helping them move their conversations online.

Dell Breaks the Social Media Laws (Cluetrain Laws #53-55)

A blog post at NewsBlog on CNET by Declan McCullough this morning told an all too familiar story that highlights a common transgression in a Marketing 2.0 world. A former Dell Sales Manager posted on his blog at Consumerist.com with tips on how to buy from Dell. Dell responded aggressively with a legal threat asking that it be taken down because it included confidential, blah blah blah. Well . . . that went over like Google at the eBay party. Here’s a quote from McCullough’s blogpost:

“That legal threat might have worked a decade ago, but not today. The correspondence was Dugg; it was Slashdotted; it was generally dissected and discussed at length by increasingly irate customers (and potential customers) until Dell was forced to turn tail and apologize.

That happened in a "we goofed" post on Saturday by Lionel Menchaca, Dell's digital media manager. He said: "We blew it... Instead of trying to control information that was made public, we should have simply corrected anything that was inaccurate. We didn't do that, and now we're paying for it." (Dell also offers a community forum.)”

I feel like Dell could have avoided all this had they only taken time to really understand the nature of information now that we’ve come up with all these interesting ways of distributing it. Did they really think they were going to put the cap on information once it was in the Social Media Web? You can’t respond faster than a blog post, you can’t shout louder than a forum, and you can’t kill a conversation you didn’t start. Let’s hope others are learning from Dell’s embarrassing example of how NOT to participate in someone else’s conversation.

From Cluetrain:

53. “There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well.”
54. “Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.”
55. “As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.”

B2B Marketing 2.0 – Conversation Enablers

Someone at work asked me how to 'leverage the power of Web 2.0' and what I have done to take advantage of some of the new technologies. I responded by saying that Web 2.0 technologies are useful for creating conversations with my customers, not just for pushing content (why pushing content isn’t good enough anymore is a post of it’s own). Then I was asked what training wheels I would suggest for someone looking to get started. I came up with this list of things I started with and would love suggestions from expert readers on others:

Blogging: Corporate blogs are becoming more common with companies like Cisco, HP, NetApp and Boeing which already active participants in the blogosphere. The common platforms for business or corporate blogs are WordPress, Movable Type and Leverage Software which goes beyond blogging to create communities.

Wiki's: Corporate wiki’s are collaborative websites which rely on a community of users to generate content and build pages. Wiki’s can be used in so many ways here are some example that come to mind –improve internal communications and expand the reach of your internal knowledgebase, use it to build a community within your customer base to create user generated documentation, use it with partners to co-create proposals. Some examples of external corporate wiki’s sites are: Linux Questions, IBM and Adobe. Three popular corporate Wiki platforms that come to mind are Confluence, SocialText and TWiki.

Social Networking: There are many social networking sites and although most of the one’s I’ve come across are personal in nature they do touch on certain business topics and can be exploited to reach a community that shows interest in topics related to your business. This site lists a few of the more popular social networking sites.

Second Life: Second Life is a ‘3-D virtual world’ – it offers a platform that can be used to host online events and collaborate with a broad audience in addition to just starting a hallway conversation with other avatars online. Notable companies on Second Life are Cisco, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and IBM.

LinkedIn: An online community of business professionals – this site can be exploited to build an expert within your company on a specific topic by taking advantage of the ‘Answers’ area of the site. It can be a good place to find potential clients and partners – and of course it’s more obvious use is finding potential job candidates.

I have limited this list to ‘conversation enablers’ – I'll be working on a follow up post around widgets and which ones are most likely to have “business value” which I think is even more interesting.