Category archive: Blogging

Monday, May 01, 2006

Sample blogs for Southwest Airlines

I previously blogged about the Southwest Airlines blog, which many have found disappointing. Here’s an example of the network in action: Brian Oberkirch has created five sample blogs for Southwest, showing them how much better it could be done.

Disappointingly, especially from one who is trying to sell his services as a social media consultant, Brian hasn’t categorised these on his blog, which makes linking to them a pain. Ease of linking is hugely important if you want to spread information across the network. Here they are, anyway:

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4
Sample 5

Link via Shel Israel

Friday, April 28, 2006

Blog about what you talk about

Bill Gates may be the most obvious public face of Microsoft, but Robert Scoble is giving him a run for his money. Scoble is a tech evangelist at Microsoft who has played a big part in helping the company win at ‘the new PR’ of the blogosphere. And here he is, giving some free advice to Southwest Airlines on the content with which they should be filling their blog:

Some other things I’d love to know? Is there free WiFi near their counters anywhere? What’s the best restaurant in each airport? Who makes the most reliable luggage? Some craft definitely have funnier crews than others. Any way to know whether you’ll be on one of those flights? ...What are their favorite online travel resources? (Flight trackers, etc). Where do they go when they want to have fun on a layover?

When I talk to groups or individuals about blogging, I often hear the same statement from at least a few people: “I don’t know what our company could actually say on a blog that would get us millions of hits.”

Scoble poses only a few questions here, but they shine a light on the kind of value that a company’s employees can give through blogging. He has had quite a lot of practice doing just that for Microsoft. But if you start by asking yourself what people tend to ask you when they find out who you work for/what your company does/what your role entails, the ideas for what you could possibly say on a blog start to roll thick and fast.

As for the ‘millions of hits’...Well, do you really want to appeal to as many people as possible, or just the people who are most likely to be your customers, potential customers, and industry peers? Most smart businesses have a niche (or a few) that they attempt to cultivate offline; online is no different. Social media just allows for much more rich and far-reaching cultivation and conversation. More on that in future posts.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Economist: Among the Audience (redux)

Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger says he thinks of ‘user-generated content’ as ’us-generated content‘. I like.

David also links to the Economist article, Among the audience, which Tomi mentions below. Great quotation re Barry Diller:

"What an ignoramus!” says Jerry Michalski, with some exasperation. He advises companies on the uses of new media tools. “Look around and there’s tons of great stuff from rank amateurs,” he says. “Diller is assuming that there’s a finite amount of talent and that he can corner it. He’s completely wrong.” Not everything in the “blogosphere” is poetry, not every audio “podcast” is a symphony, not every video “vlog” would do well at Sundance, and not every entry on Wikipedia, the free and collaborative online encyclopedia, is 100% correct, concedes Mr Michalski. But exactly the same could be said about newspapers, radio, television and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Economist: Among the Audience

This week’s Economist (April 22, 2006 issue date) has an excellent 16 page special report on new media, called Among the Audience. It covers much similar ground as we did in our book, Communities Dominate Brands, such as having two pages on blogging (we did a chapter) or including the Ohmy News case like we did as a case study, etc.

The story is a particularly good read for anyone involved in the “content side” of old media. It helps explain the roles of blogging, wikis, and user-generated content. I think for covering new media, it does leave the real innovations - user sharing, engagement, and the role of advertising/marketing in that space - at too little coverage, but it perhaps was not the purpose. Certainly the Economist article is well researched and covers many of the new media phenomena such as pointing out that podcasting is not quite the same to radio, as blogging is to print media; for one thing podcasts cannot be delivered in real time (you cannot cover breaking stories efficiently with podcasts) - so podcasts are more time-shifting media; and unlike blogs, you can’t link from one podcast to another.

For anyone who reads our blog, I urge buying this week’s Economist and reading that special report. It is definitely worth reading!

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Relating to the public - what a novel concept!

But what happens if big company brands realize that they no longer need a media middleman to connect with consumers?

So asks Scott Karp, only three+ years or so after Adriana Cronin-Lukas actively started taking that question direct to the big brands. Of course it’s a matter of when, not if.

Link via Dave Winer, who has his own reaction.