10 ways to maximize your blog's ROI: Part 1, give your organization a human voice
Summary
In tough times, blogs have to pull their own weight. Here's how they can do it - starting with the way blogging can put a personal face on an organization, which is the first step to building relationships and trust.
Times are tight, which is the polite way of saying that your communications budget has probably been handed to Freddy Krueger for a light trim. So whether your organization is already blogging, or just thinking about it, you need to make a strong case for your blog's ROI.
So over the next few weeks, we're going to look at 10 ways that blogging provides value to your organization - whether it's a company, non-profit, government agency or community group. And we're going to talk about how you can get blogging to go that extra mile for you, and wring out every drop of golden ROI from your posts... while staying true to the principles of authenticity and transparency that give social media so much of their power.
(That may sound like a balancing act - but it actually it isn't. There's no trick to it. It's just a simple trick. Authenticity is actually the engine of the value of blogging, and the relationships and conversations it engenders. But I'm getting ahead of myself...)
So without any further ado, here's blogging's first source of value for your organization:
#1. Blogging lets your organization start communicating with a personal voice, and a human face.
Most organizational communications are impersonal. Vehicles like news releases speak with an institutional voice, and generally it's either flat and emotionless or full of PR hype. Either way, there's no trust and no connection between the communicator and the audience.
Even when individuals do step forward, it's almost always in a scripted way, in speeches, news releases or canned corporate videos. (The exception is when your CFO blurts a few offhand comments to reporters as they're being led away by the police, which - although compelling and humanizing - usually doesn't do a lot for trust either.)
Enter blogging. Whether the blogger is the CEO, an executive director, a senior manager, a frontline employee, a volunteer or even an intern hired expressly to blog, they're going to put a human face on your organization. They'll be talking in a conversational voice and casting your organization's work in the light of their own perceptions and experience.
How does that help you? There's a saying that it's harder to be angrier at a real person than a faceless organization. Now, that isn't exactly true; think of how you felt about your ex right after your last godawful breakup, compared to how you feel about, say, the Owens Corning corporation. But it's fair to say that it's easier to identify with a person than with a faceless organization.
And once that identification has happened, real communication becomes possible.
Here are some ways you can stress the personal on your organizational blog:
- Have one or two people who are the lead bloggers on the site. Let them set the tone, voice and personality of the blog.
- Make sure your bloggers are writing under their own names, not a pseudonym. It's easier to gain trust if you're willing to show a little yourself - and a real name is the least you can offer.
- A thumbnail photo of each post's author can have a big impact. We connect emotionally with faces, even if they're just images.
- Blog with personality and an attitude - in the sense of expressing some kind of emotional reaction to what you're writing about.
- Keep the tone conversational. Passive voice, corporate jargon, financial buzzwords - lose them in favour of plain language. By all means, use appropriate technical terms if you're talking to an audience that uses them too... but ask yourself if this is the kind of language friends might use over coffee (and by coffee, I mean beer).
- Share a little. Hint at having a personal life: pets, hobbies, interests outside of work.
- Understand there are boundaries. Don't overdisclose - chances are any blog post that begins "Wow - I got so trashed last night" isn't going to end well for your or your organization. And don't disclose personal details you wouldn't want splashed all over the web.
You'll know you're getting a good return on this investment in your organization's human face when you see pay-offs like...
- More positive mentions from other bloggers, often referring to your organization's blogger by name - ideally, their first name. For businesses, look especially for mentions associated with purchases of your product; for non-profits, look for references to donating and links to your donation page. In each case, these tell you if there's a link between positive word-of-mouth and actual folding cash money.
- Fewer customer complaints aired on blogs, possibly accompanied by some increase in incoming questions to your bloggers (who will become your first line of defense until you figure out a customer service 2.0 offering).
- More traffic to your site coming from links on other blogs.
In short: be yourself, be professional and be human, and you'll go a long way toward putting the "I" in "ROI".
10 ways to maximize your blog's ROI: Part 2, getting high-value feedback
Summary
In this second part of a 10-part series, find out how blogs can earn their keep. This post, we look at the value of the feedback you can get from your blog's readers.
Think for a moment about how much your organization spends to find out what its audience (a term we'll keep using until something better comes along, but it really isn't adequate in a social media age) is thinking.
Maybe you're doing opinion polling or focus groups. Maybe you have labs where your prospective customers are testing your newest products and services. Maybe you've hired consultants to mine your customer service logs for golden nuggest of insight.
Maybe you're just thinking of getting a psychic on staff. (Hey, we're located in Vancouver; we can hook you up with someone.)
Feedback is tremendously valuable stuff. And you don't just want to hear reactions to what you're doing and saying; you want to know what's on your audience's mind about the whole range of subjects that could touch on your organization's products, services or mission.
Enter blogging. More to the point, blog comments -- where your readers respond to your posts and, often, alert you to issues, opinions and ideas you need to know about. Sometimes you'll find a valuable nugget in response to something you've said; other times, a side conversation between readers about something completely different will reveal an important insight; and on still other occasions, people will volunteer something to you from out of the blue.
This is a conversation you aren't going to have through the feedback form on your web site. There is a lot that your audience will share with an actual person -- especially someone they feel they have a relationship with -- that they'd never even think of dropping into your virtual suggestion box.
Some suggestions for getting valuable feedback through your blog:
- Make it clear what kind of feedback you're looking for, and what you can't help with. There's no sense having people leave tech support questions for your company's Squidinator 2000 if you have no way of dealing with them.
- Thank people for their comments, critical and positive. And be genuinely grateful: they've given up a little of their time and attention to help your organization be more effective.
- Engage with commenters, including the negative ones. It's a way of compensating people for that time they're giving up - and for keeping the comments flowing.
- Recognize that complaints are at least as valuable as kudos. One legitimate complaint on your blog could well represent dozens, even hundreds of people who are fuming in silence. Fix that problem, and you could make a lot of people happy. That said...
- Recognize when a commenter is just being abusive; no law says you have to play with bullies. Don't feel like you have to respond to them, either. The other readers on your blog will recognize inappropriate behaviour for what it is.
- Be sure your organization buys into the idea that you'll be allowing critical comments as well as favorable ones. That's the table stakes of blogging - and the minimum level of openness you need to get honest, useful feedback.
- Know the limits to what your organization can accept, and make those clear on your blog. You don't want your users to feel they've had the rug pulled out from underneath them when and if you need to edit or delete an inapproprate comment.
- As you develop a relationship with your blog's readers, start asking them directly for feedback. Float a trial balloon; point them to your latest online ad campaign; ask them about their lives and the problems you can help them to solve. Just remember that you're doing all of this in public.
- Offer more than one way to give feedback. Blog comments are great - but consider inviting your readers to take polls, post on their own blogs about a particular subject, or upload a YouTube video with a unique tag. You'll get more diverse input, and potentially expose your blog to a wider audience.
- Don't let your blog get overrun with comment spam; it can drive out real people faster than anything else you might do. Invest in a service like Akismet or Mollom if you find yourself overwhelmed.
- Remember that your readers, valued and wonderful though they are, are in no way representative of your broader audience or constituency. Don't take their input as gospel. And remember what Henry Ford was reported to have said: if he'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses". (Actually, in retrospect, that might have been for the best... but you get his point.)
- Find channels to update your organization's decision-makers on what you're hearing on your blog. No matter how high the quality of feedback, it's worthless if it isn't heard and acted on. And when your organization does act on it, let your readers (especially the one or ones who offered the relevant feedback) know about it.
You'll know you're getting valuable feedback when:
- You're bringing up blog comments at business meetings.
- A co-worker asks you to run an idea past your blog audience.
- Others in your organization mention blog comments they've read to you.
- Your colleagues start asking for more frequent feedback updates.
- The feedback is resulting in identifiable changes and improvements in the way you operate (such as fewer complaints to customer service).