6/23/2005 18:44

Q. How can a company start a conversation outside of the IT industry, if they wish to reach CEOs, CFOs, etc. to consider their telecom product as a productivity tool?

A. Tara and I both attended a blogging event last January called the Blog Business Summit. Go here for more info – there's one coming up in August in SFO. We'll be there!

One of the most interesting things that I gleaned from the summit was that you can get a long way by ‘influencing the influencers.'

For example: If you have a particular group of people you'd like to recommend your product (an influential analyst in telecom, for example), find out who blogs about the industry, and read their posts. Then use Technorati and others to find out who they comment on, and who they like. Start talking to the people they like, by commenting on their posts, asking questions, etc. Once they start talking with you, they might start talking about you. It's likely then, that the analyst will recognize you when you start commenting on her blog. By then, you'll have an enhanced knowledge of the issues surrounding your market, relationships (we hope) with industry influencers, and the confidence that you can speak not only to them but to the CEOs and CFOs themselves.

It's pretty standard practice, but much easier - through blogs - to learn more quickly what's resonating with people who are talking about your industry.

Q: What are RSS feeds, and how are they used?

A: We hope our presentation gave you an intro to RSS. We gave another presentation this month that talked about RSS and the other “alphabet soup� technologies available for marketers. We'll post a link to it here in case you'd like to check it out.

At Marqui, we're happy that RSS extends the reach of our blog, our announcements, our news. We can tell it works, because sometimes we'll blog, and then within moments we'll have people commenting on our posts. It's pretty cool.

There are many great resources for RSS online – I'd recommend looking at Chris Prillo's summary here. Chris is an entertaining guy who's very much into technology. Go forth and be enlightened.

Q: If you already have an email newsletter, are you saying that you can also post that on your blog?

A: I think we'd suggest that rather than posting a newsletter in your blog, post a link to your blog in your newsletter. The blog should augment the newsletter, not restate it. And use your blog to explain the stories behind the things you've talked about in your newsletter. Put a human being or two from your company and their stories (with permission, of course) behind your company's accomplishments. That's the kind of thing we'd like to see you do with your blog.

Q: Is your blog part of your corporate Web site or is it reached through a separate entry point?

A: We have a link to our blog on the home page of our web site. And we have a link to our web site from our blog. Of course, your readers (both web and blog) can bookmark either place and go there directly (or subscribe using RSS) but you should make it convenient to go to either place from the other.

We're rolling through the questions as we have time. I suspect we'll be finished with them by noon (PST) tomorrow (Friday, June 24).

Cheers!

Posted by at June 23, 2005 6:44 PM

Comments

TrackBack Link

aalq ikilubor : onowuqez uyiduje

olafona wu