Starting a one-way blog

The first is getting the word out on regular basis in a spot that will give you web visibility. The easiest way to do this is to put a blog on your front page and post relevant company news to it. Turn on RSS (really simple syndication) and get your RSS feed carried by all of the major portals. You do not even have to open comments so that visitors can respond. One way communication with easy access via RSS is adequate to start getting benefit.

You might wonder, “Why not just use email to accomplish this?” First is a question of reach. Only people to whom you send the email have a chance of receiving it. Then, only 35% of the commercial emails you send will actually be read. Second is the archive value. Personal email archives are by definition only visible to the person and then only if retained. Why leave the duration of your message at the whim of the recipient? Web-based archives are on the web and available to be crawled by search engines. This fact alone raises your likelihood of being listed high in the rankings without having to do pay-per-click advertising if you are posting content targeted at your relevant customer segment.

Allowing comments and responding to them

Starting a blog begins the process of getting people to come back for more because you are generating new content, therefore a reason to return. However, your visitor's engagement may still not be high because, after all, all they can do at your site is hear you talk. The way to raise engagement is to open comments. Opening comments has two beneficial effects. First, you will be able to identify and interact with your most engaged customers, those who actually invest the effort to leave a comment. These people have taken the time to leave a remark that the whole world can see. They will return to see if you respond and what you say. Therefore, be sure to respond to those who leave comments, and even consider sending them a short, personal email. That reward will get them coming back for more, just as receiving the reward of a thoughtful comment may make it easier for you to blog yourself. Second, the fact that there are comments that you do not control, along with responses from you, increases the information value of your blog/site to other users who are not themselves leaving comments, i.e., those who like to watch.

Increased information value is what gets people to talk about your site and link to it. Consider the over 500 links to GM's FastLane blog in February, 2005 for a blog that started in January, 2005.

It is at the point of allowing comments that most business people start to raise their strongest objections to starting business blogs. It was the motivation for the post that I cited at the beginning of this article. These might be summed up as follows: (1) It will take too much time; (2) My customers might say things that will hurt me; (3) Random people will start to SPAM my site with pills, porn, and casino ads masquerading as legitimate comments. All three of these are valid and should be considered as costs of interaction to be weighed against the benefits of interaction in an ROI calculation.

Let me take each in turn. It is true that responding to comments takes time. One way to determine whether it is worth it is to weigh the time spent answering a comment one time, vs. having to interact with several individuals via email. Further, because the interaction is taking place on a blog, it is findable via a search engine, making it more likely that other people with the same concern will head to your site, not somewhere else. At this point, it should be noted that because blogs generate permanent static file web archives, they are much more findable by search engines than other interaction software that does not, including most bulletin board and many content management systems.

It is also true that customers might say negative things about you. Consider two possibilities. First, if there are issues you are already aware of, then you are probably already trying to fix the problem. Blogging might help you publicize this fact and make your efforts more visible. Steve Rubel of the noted PR Firm CooperKatz actually recommends starting a blog in a time of crisis (I might amend that to say have a blog already going that you can turn to the crisis, just as Bigha recently did when their laser pointer product was used to interfere with aircraft on takeoff and landing).

Further, you cannot control what customers say away from your site. For a complainer to start their own blog only takes five minutes and is free. However, by allowing people with legitimate grievances to voice them on your site, you can take the initiative of publicly addressing the issue. The Internet visibility afforded if you use an already existing blog will also play to your advantage. For people doing Internet searches on the issue, your site and your response are now available for examination and potentially as readily available as those of the complainers.

The issue of comment SPAM and inappropriate comment content are very real. Most SPAM is readily controlled with off-the-shelf solutions that are updated as needed. Not using these solutions with an active blog is suicidal. Using them, reduces SPAM and most inappropriate content to a minor nuisance that you can deal with in your spare time.

Turning interactions into transactions

The value of interaction might seem nebulous up to this point. It has consisted of making customers more likely to return to the site, getting them to spread the word about the site, and making it less costly than point-to-point methods for communicating with site visitors. To really get value out of interaction you need to understand the role information consumption plays in getting people to buy.

Today, DoubleClick released a study (pdf, via SearchEngineWatch Blog) indicating that search played a role in roughly half of all online purchases of apparel, computer hardware, sports/fitness, and travel. In the items covered by Double Click, most search occurred between 12 and 2 weeks before the purchase. In other words, the vast majority of visits to sites were not for completing transactions but for gathering information as the consumer was formulating a purchase decision. For higher involvement items such as cars, the amount of information consumption only increases, sometimes occurring over the course of a year.

Sites that succeed in providing fresh, updated information to consumers are more likely to grab their attention. With frank and open treatment of interaction they are likely to appear as legitimate information sources while consumers come to the purchase decision.