Survey finds only 15% of Fortune 500s are blogging…

A recent Burson-Marsteller survey found 15% of the Fortune 500 have blogs. I had to read this one twice.  I was frankly surprised by this, though probably shouldn’t be.  Actually I should, since Burson’s Chief Digital Strategist Erin Byrne was also surprised:

“When I thought about it, I thought that the number would have been higher, and I think the reason…why it still isn’t higher is that companies are still grappling with how they participate in the conversation when they don’t have control over the message.”


As you would guess the 15% is heavily weighted to companies in the general tech sector, with retailing also well represented.  Still the number is low  - really low considering that blogging is a pretty basic building block of a social media strategy. 

At RelevantMind we spend a lot of time dealing with the strategies impacting the broader social engagement landscape.  I’d somewhat disagree with Erin though – blogging is one of the more structured and controllable forms of social media. I think the reason behind the lack of adoption isn’t that blogging in and of itself is that daunting.  But an effective blogging strategy needs both commitment and internal evangelism.  It may be (relatively) controllable, but it is opening the door to the whole social media engagement world.

The Evangelists with two (important) hats…

Last week Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb, authored a great post called “Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers?”.  While focused on the startup world, this applies in a big way to any company trying to figure out how to start engaging effectively.  Their definition of Community Manager

“A community manager is someone who communicates with a company’s users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for.”

Too often the user-facing roles are disconnected from the internal stakeholders, and this tends to get worse the bigger the company.  We’ve all seen it – account management, sales and customer service representing the “voice of the customer”, engineering, production, finance, etc. as the “voice of internal requirements”.

The Community Manager provides the critical link by evangelizing the company externally and the customers internally.  This is a key senior role, one that requires passion, great communication skills and a thorough knowledge of product development and marketing.  

The role may go by many names from Product Evangelist to Chief Communicator to Community Evangelist and so on.  We think that the important thing is that, whatever you call it, the role is seen as both internal and externally critical.

Consumers take on engagement

Over the past few weeks, I’ve done a lot of talking about “engagement” – what it really means, who’s missing/driving the boat, why it’s important, etc. But the results of a recent survey by ExpoTV.com, Brand Engagement: What Consumers Really Think, show that online engagement with consumers needs to be a top priority for companies because consumers are asking for ongoing engagement, especially regarding product design. According to results, listening drives loyalty.

“Eighty-nine percent of survey respondents said that they would feel more loyal or significantly more loyal to a brand they liked who invited them to participate in a feedback group. And, 63% of respondents would even feel loyal to a brand they were unfamiliar with that reached out to hear their opinion.”

This got me thinking about the brands towards which I am most loyal. I could only think of one that attempts to listen to me – Apple. Apple makes the effort to engage with me throughout the entire product life-cycle. The other products/brands to which I’m loyal – Anthropologie, Prada, Coke – to name a few. I’m just as “loyal” to these brand, as I am to Apple. But there is a significant difference in how I talk about these brands – which is critical from a word of mouth standpoint.

For instance, when someone asks me why I only drink Coke my answer = I’m from Atlanta and it’s the home of Coke. Prada = because Prada shoes don’t hurt my feet and are well suited for city walking. Anthropologie = they have affordable style that fits my body type. Not very exciting comments.

But when someone asks me how I feel about Apple or my Macbook, iPhone, iPod, I’ve got an earful for them. Each of these three products makes doing everyday things (like work, working out, walking the dog, waiting for friends, finding the right directions, etc) easier and more enjoyable. And Apple has done a great job of listening to how people work and live to make sure of that. And because they’re listening to me and others like me, I (and they) feel more personally attached to their brand/products – which drives me to purchase more of and only Apple products when possible.  Sure, I prefer Prada shoes because of how they fit my feet. But I insist on buying Apple products because of how they fit my life and I’ll passionately tell anyone who is willing to listen.