Debbie Weil is moderating a two-person panel: Jeremiah Owyang, global web manager for Hitachi Data Systems and Paul Rosenfeld, general manager of Intuit’s Quickbooks online edition.

Weil has created a Squidoo lens related to the session. She guided the panel based on issues, which follow:

Fear of blogging

Paul:

• Starting blogging to address fear customers had of doing accounting on the web. “We’re human and we really care about you…let’s get into a conversation.”
• Advice for new bloggers: Just doing it gets you far.
• A lot of fear is groundless. Will I get fired for blogging? They have one thing in common: Not understanding culture in which they work. Bring to blogging the Golden Rule.

Jeremiah:

• Blogging isn’t about fear; it’s about engaging customers.
• CEO can engage in two-way communication with customers. That’s going to happen anyway, because consumers trust each other. The conversation will happen whether or not you participate.
• CEO left comments on analyst blogs before creating his blog.
• Hitachi Data systems has three blogs including CEOs, using Typepad, bypassing IT. These Typepad blogs have been designed to reflect the Hitachi graphic standards.

Negative comments

Jeremiah:

• Blogs are a tool to enable conversations. Goal is to have connection and relationship with customers, analysts, others. That’s why comments are enabled and even comments are disabled.
• If you don’t enable comments, bloggers will blog about it, which is even louder.
• Comments at Hitachi are moderated.
• Blogging takes up about 30% of his time as manager of global web marketing.
• Comments represent an insignificant amount of time. A blog that gets a lot of traction may take more time.

Debbie:

• GM keeps commenting going on Fastlane even while the company is going through tough times.

Paul:

• It’s important to hear where your customers are dissatisfied so you can address the issues and better please customers.
• Posts to the blog from the employee who keeps the server up and running talk about server problems. Makes us human, imperfect, which people understand and appreciate (vs. companies that behave as though they’re infallible).
• Blog is a group blog, removing need for any one contributor to post frequently.
• One negative (critical) comment led Paul to email the customer and establish a one-to-one dialog, saving the account. Easier to assess value this way than assessing the number of hits to the blog.

Measuring effectiveness

Jeremiah:

• Hired firm to measure “instances” on blog (about $3,000-$4,000 per month).
• Blog has “resonation:” overall blog metrics, comments (you’ve resonated), trackbacks (who’s linking to your blog), looking at the overall feeling people express when they write about you (qualitative).
• Can you measure “return on blog?” Not until you can measure a conversation between a customer and a salesperson in a coffee shop. Blogs somewhat easier to measure due to resonation.

Who should blog?

Jeremiah doesn’t allow it on Hitachi’s blogs.

Rebecca Blood was in the room, noted that the person in your organization who should blog is the one who is already articulating the vision. She also noted that executives can repurpose content (such as a speech). Use your blog to play to your strengths by getting the passionate and articulate people blogging, whether it’s the CEO or the janitor.

Jeremiah gets sample posts from employees interested in blogging in order to determine who would be an effective blogger.

Anybody on Paul’s team can blog—they just have to want to. They’re not required to post with any frequency. He manages the blog but doesn’t control it. “I started this blog trusting people’s judgment and I’ve never been disappointed.”

Paul thinks it’s important to start blogging. Bloggers don’t need to be visionary and certainly don’t need to be the CEO…just people who are predisposed to doing it due to their passion for connecting with audiences about their area of expertise.

Technorati Tags: new comm forum, corporate blogging