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Corporate Blogs for Technology Businesses: Authentic Marketing at WorkA Sampling of Corporate Blogsfrom Technology CompaniesYale Tankus, vice president of Alliances andPartnerships for HP’s management softwarebusiness (HP ve Goldstein, CEO of Alacrawww.alacrablog.comAlan Meckler, CEO of rCisco Worldwide Government Affairs’High Tech Policyhttp://blogs.cisco.com/gov/Simplicity from Cincom peak from EnvironmentalSystems Corporationhttp://www.plantspeak.com/Read Between the Mines: A text miningblog from Glenn Fannick, a ProductDevelopment Manager at Factivahttp://www.fannick.blogspot.com/Most first-time bloggers try to covertoo much. It is better to start witha narrow subject and leave room toexpand. Be authentic. People readblogs because they want to find anhonest voice speaking passionatelyabout a subject. You do not have tobe harsh or controversial if that is notyour style. If you are interesting andprovide valuable information, yourreadership will grow. Before you begin,think carefully about the name ofyour blog and the tagline, which willbe indexed by the search engines.Some organizations have created formalguidelines for employee bloggers.The decision to create guidelines issomething that is personal to your owncompany’s situation and should bedetermined based on the input fromMarketing, HR, and other departments.It is always better to avoid passingindividual blog posts through yourPR or legal teams. However, ifyour blog posts must be reviewed byothers in your organization beforegoing live, then have your colleaguesfocus on the content, not your actualwords. Do not let PR people turn theauthentic content in your blog intoanother form of “MarCom copy.”Blogging technology:Easy and inexpensiveUnlike websites that require designand HTML skills, off-the-shelf blogsoftware offers rapid set-up andeasy-to-use features. With basicknow-how, you can quickly and easilyestablish and promote your blog. Easy-to-use blogging services areavailable from Blogger , TypePad ,WordPress, and others. Research theservices based on your needs andchoose wisely because it is difficult toswitch once your blog is established. You will need to choose a URLfor your blog. The bloggingservices all offer a URL that youcan customize (such as yourblog.typepad.com). You can also mapyour blog to your company’s domain(www.yourcompany.com/yourblog) ora custom domain (www.yourblog.com). 10 productmarketing.com Volume 4, Issue 1, 2006 Blogging software makes it easyto choose color, design, font, and tocreate a simple text-based masthead.You might consider a customgraphical image as your masthead. The look and feel of the blogshould be complementary toyour corporate design guidelines,but it need not be identical. Blogging software usually allowsyou to turn on a commentsfeature so your visitors are ableto comment on your posts. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is astandard format that blog posts aredelivered in to subscribers. Makecertain that your new blog has acapability to offer an RSS feed. Standard practice is to sendan electronic “ping” to blogsearch engines and RSS readercompanies when you havea new post on the blog. Blogs play a great role in helpingto achieve high rankings in searchengine results. Smart bloggersunderstand this and use their blogsto help promote their organizationto audiences who are searchingon particular words and phrases. To build an audience, create linksto your blog from your homepage, product pages, or onlinemedia room. Mention your blogin your email newsletter or offlinenewsletters and create links to yourblog as part of your email signature.Your customers, potential customers,investors, employees, and the mediaare all reading blogs and there is nodoubt that the corporate blog is aterrific way for technology marketers totell authentic stories to the market. Butbuilding an audience for a corporateblog takes time. Most blog servicesprovide tools for measuring traffic.Use this data to learn which posts areattracting the most attention. You canalso learn what sites people are comingfrom when they visit your blog andwhat search terms they used to find you.Use this information to continuouslyimprove your blog. And don’t forget,you are the expert.

Corporate Blogs for Technology Businesses: Authentic Marketing at WorkCase Study: Blog from Environmental Systems Corporation Shows Domain ExpertiseAccording to Steve Drevik, MarketingCommunications Director forEnvironmental Systems Corporation,the company’s core competency isits domain expertise in air pollutionmonitoring. The company pridesitself on maintaining three fulltime regulatory experts to keepthe company and its customers onthe forefront of evolving EPA, state,and local regulatory requirements.This information is not alwaysclear, so interpretations and a deepunderstanding of what a particularregulatory requirement means andhow it applies to the company’sclient’s business is invaluable.Even before Drevik attendedPragmatic Marketing’s EffectiveMarketing Programs seminar hehad been plotting and schemingabout establishing a corporate blog.“I had been addicted to a coupleof blogs related to marketing anddesign for quite some time,” Dreviksays. “I saw a blog as a great wayto present our company’s domainknowledge and our position in ahighly credible manner. It was onething to say that we were the expertsin our marketing literature and ournewsletters. It was quite another toput our thoughts and our opinionsout for regulators and customersto review, criticize, and comment.The blog was clearly a greatopportunity to cement and expandour position as experts and leaders.”The first challenge for Drevikwas in selling the idea to seniormanagement. “My VP noted thatuntil I mentioned it to him, he hadnever heard the word ‘blog.’ Butover the next two weeks, he haddozens of encounters with the termon the radio, in newspaper articles,and on TV,” Drevik says. “Thetiming of my proposal was indeedfortunate. I presented the idea tothe Sales Director, and all of ourOperational Directors. Once it wasthoroughly explained, everyone wason board and saw the potential. Wewere clearly charting new waters ina company with a history of veryconservative and limited marketing.”Creating PlantspeakDrevik says that one of his greatestchallenges was naming the blog. “Wehad to return to the drawing boardseveral times, a challenge familiarwith anyone who has to developnew product names or logos,” Dreviksays. He chose the name Plantspeakand also was able to secure thedomain name (www.plantspeak.com).Drevik went through a number ofblogs and found features that he feltwould be key to his blog, such as aneasy way for readers to find specificarticles of interest. “We settled onthe Scoop blog engine, which allowscategorization of articles, as well asthe ability for readers to create theirown ‘clippings’ of particular articlesof interest to them,” Drevik says.“Scoop also allows for easy creationof polls, either associated with themain site or with individual articles.”Environmental Systems Corporationlaunched the Plantspeak blog at alarge trade show using giveawaysand a tag line: Hear What OthersAre Saying. “Within two weeks, wehad over 100 outside registrants, orroughly a quarter of the conferenceattendees,” Drevik says. “Thatnumber quickly rose to over 300with some more email promotion,good for our niche industry,where the biggest trade showbrings in about 500 attendees.”Drevik says that while he hasmore work to do to build up hisreadership, the response so far hasbeen very positive. He has continuinggoals for the blog in the company’smarketing plan including crosslinking and cross-promotion from thecompany’s website (www.envirosys.com). He is clearly enthusiastic abouthis blog and offers suggestions foranyone considering taking the leapinto the blogosphere. “Focus on yourcore competency as it relates to thecustomer,” he says. “The blog shouldnot be a blatant marketing tool topromote your company. Use theblog to provide information usefulto their daily jobs, with embeddedlinks as appropriate to what youdo within your own website. Andlike any website, promotion andreadership take time. Be patient.”productmarketing.com Volume 4, Issue 1, 2006 11

Corporate Blogs for Technology Businesses: Authentic Marketing at WorkCase Study: Factiva’s Text Mining Blog Highlights InnovationGlenn Fannick, a Product Development Manager at Factiva , a DowJones & Reuters Company, started his blog “Read Between the Mines”(http://www.fannick.blogspot.com/) as an experiment. “My job at Factivahas me working on products that help enterprises monitor blogs, so I thoughtI should know what it is like to be on the side of the author,” Fannick says. “Ithas helped me focus on my topic area, given me a creative outlet, and maybeeven given Factiva a bit more credibility in the topic on which I write.”Fannick blogs about a very specific subject area: text mining and media monitoring.“It has helped me to stay on top of the developments in the industry,” he says.“But more than that, it helps me to develop my ideas and challenge myself morethan would happen if I just read a trade journal about the topic. My blog is alsoa good way of connecting with Factiva’s client-facing staff around the world. I’vereceived emails from sales staff in other offices who read the blog and had ideasrelated to their regions. So it is a good internal communications tool too.”Fannick sees his blog as an important way to humanize what he does. “Businessfocused blogs can be a very effective way for a company to ‘show off’ its humanresources,” he says. “I think many of Factiva’s clients stay Factiva clients becauseof the people behind the products. We strive to be open with our clients andblogging is another great way to do that.” He has also utilized the interactivenature of the medium. “Blogging is conversing and often times I have founda conversation starts by reading someone else’s post, commenting on his orher site and then going back to my site and writing more about it,” he says.“Many people don’t have much interesting to say,” Fannick cautions. “Samething goes for companies. If you are in a sector that does not lend itself to opendialog or competes mostly on price and not on service or innovation, then theremight not be much to talk about. There is really no reason to write a blog ifyou cannot envision the type of person who would have interest reading it.” Heoffers sound advice for technology companies considering a blog: “A companyprobably has to dare to be a different and willing to take some risks. If yourcompany does everything by committee or has to have everything signed offby five levels of executives, your blog will end up reading like your corporatehome page or your marketing material—overwritten and uninteresting.”David Meerman Scott is an instructor for the Pragmatic Marketing Effective MarketingPrograms seminar and author of the new book Cashing in with Content: Howinnovative marketers use digital information to turn browsers into buyers.Check out his blog at www.WebInkNow.com 12 productmarketing.com Volume 4, Issue 1, 2006

Ask the ExpertAfter 25 years working for a number of software and hardware companies I’ve noticed that therehas been seepage of the product management function into Sales and other parts of the company.Is there any way to change a culture that is deeply rooted on “we do what Sales says because weneed to make the sale or we do what Development says because this is a technical organization”?I encounter those organizationsall the time: revenue or technologydriven organizations who don’tvalue product management. Theseare often the very organizationswe see in the news—in bankruptcy.Most companies only reallyunderstand product managementwhen the company starts to fail.But getting senior managementsupport for product managementis often a huge challenge—withonly one answer: use market factsto make all product decisions.Alas, it’s easier said than done.tech-driven startsThere is a huge pretension onthe part of engineers (and oftenthe founder of your company,who was an engineer), whosay, “I am brilliant. I havecome up with a technologyproduct and everybody willwant it. All we need to donow is find customers.”These companies quickly reachsome level of success and theycan’t push past it. They’ve beenat ten million dollars for a decade,and they’ve had a bunch of newproducts and none of them havedone well, and finally they thinkthat maybe product managementis the answer. It’s just too hardto build and maintain a companyon technology alone. ProductManagement gets involved insaving the company when theother avenues have failed.tech-driven endssales-driven startsThere are organizations whereyou watch their stock fall andif you interview any of theiremployees, they say “wow, wethought the sales people werethe customer and now our stockhas tumbled to 2 and we don’tknow how it happened.” But thefailure was easy to predict: salespeople are not the customer andthe more we listen to them themore likely it is we will bankruptthe company. Sales people arefocused on the three deals they’reworking—which is exactly whatwe want from them. But we don’twant to rely on these short-termfocused employees for longterm product strategy. In fairnessto sales people, their VP hasencouraged this behavior. TheVP of Sales doesn’t believe in allthat tedious planning and ivorytower thinking that ProductManagement is doing; a “deala day” is his success formula.It’s just the way sales peopleare wired and that’s why growthcompanies look elsewherefor strategy. Revenue drivencompanies focus on the quarterto the detriment of next year.The solution is for ProductManagement to be representativesof markets and not deals. Finda problem in a market segmentand ensure that the segmentis big enough to generate aprofit. Deliver this informationto the senior executive teamin a business case that combinespersonal customer experiencewith quantified market research.Sell the value of the long-term view.Once a path is determined, keepup the communication. Don’tcover over the problems andhope you won’t miss the datesbecause you surely will. Whenthe company accepts a dealthat pulls developers from yourproject, make sure the seniorexecutive team understands thatthey have delayed the deliveryof your project. When a developeradds a “neat” feature whilerefusing to work one that we’veagreed to, tell management. Ineffect, tell them that the companyis deviating from their plan andmake sure they’re happy about it.But they should be furious wheneither sales people or developersderail agreed-upon plans.sales-driven endsSteve Johnson is an expert in technology productmanagement. He works for Pragmatic Marketing asan instructor for the top-rated courses Practical ProductManagement and Requirements That Work as wellas onsite courses. Contact Steve at m Volume 4, Issue 1, 2006 13

isitionMarketResearchProductPerformanceBuy, Buildor rainingPresentations& DemosUseScenariosSuccessStoriesCollateral &Sales ICPragmatic Marketing Seminars 1993-2006 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.think with the grid. The recognized expert in technology product management and marketing,Pragmatic Marketing’s common sense approach is built on years of experience andbest practices. The Pragmatic Marketing seminars introduce a framework thatgives technology marketers the tools necessary to deliver market-driven productsthat people want to buy. Our framework is the foundation for all our courses,from identifying markets and their problems to writing market requirementsto creating go-to-market strategy that meets your corporate and revenue goals.Since 1993, over 30,000 attendees have been trained to “think with the grid.”The Industry Standard in Technology Product Management and Marketing Education.

Complete Curriculum for Technology MarketersPractical ProductManagement Practical Product Management isfor product managers and thosewho manage or contribute toaspects of product marketing andmanagement. This two-day seminarfully explores the role of technicalproduct management, providingtools and a framework to help getproducts to market more efficiently.Complete seminaragendas are available atwww.PragmaticMarketing.comDAYS 1 – 2I. Strategic Role of Product Management What is marketing?Definition of the role of product managementContrasting product management and product marketingAssigning ownership of responsibilitiesIdentifying the “first steps” with gap analysisII. Market Analysis Distinctive competenceMarket researchMarket problemsTechnology assessmentCompetitive analysisIII. Quantitative Analysis Market sizingProduct performanceOperational metricsWin/loss analysisIV. Product Strategy Business casePricingBuy, build, or partner?Thought leadersInnovationctal ProduictcarPsureStill not ment is for you?.Managesessiony1/2-daEERils.Faor detafrAttendevock cSee baV. Product Planning Positioning Sales processVI. Case StudyVI

Pragmatic Marketing's Annual Product Management Salary Survey 2005 Steve Johnson is an expert in technology product management. He works for Pragmatic Marketing as an instructor for the top-rated courses Practical Product Management and Requirements That Work as well as onsite courses. Contact Steve at sjohnson@PragmaticMarketing.com