Reflections on Robert Scoble & Shel Israel's Session on the Blogging Phenomenon
Yesterday on the MS campus I took an hour out of my schedule to attend a discussion with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel about their new book, Naked Conversations. Below are some of the notes I managed to scribble down as they covered a range of topics centering around why they felt business blogging was a topic compelling enough to write a book about it (as opposed to posting).
There are 5 pillars of conversational software (read: blogging):
- easy technology: no HTML or dev skills necessary to participate
- discoverability: Technorati, etc shorten time to discovery
- linking and referrals create community
- permalinking to specific content allows for asynchronous reference
- syndication: pushing content to subscribers makes it simple, stoopid
Robert stated that "anti-marketing" marketing is the current confluence of events driving the prevalence of new business bloggers. Key points are that
- typical marketing content must be clean and sanitized, PR/Legal sign-off, etc before release
- nevertheless, with blogging, lack of editing lends credence to blogged conversations
- giving negative side as well does same
- immediate feedback mechanism also allows for dialogue, which lends credibility and promotes "stickiness"
- there is power in speaking to an audience of 30, due to
- targeted nature of audience
- conversational nature of interaction
Both Robert and Shel went on to state that "the creation of new [traditional] marketing techniques grows at about same rate as its decline in efficacy." Blogging overcomes this by creating an immediate, granular and opt-in (self-)segmentation of market. In other words, blogging is simply another form of disintermediation, in this case of information, allowing the consumer/customer and the business to "get the crap out of the way" and get down to the *discussion* of why a company's products do or don't work for their customers.
How does one determine whether a blogger, or reader for that matter, is legit? There exists a 2-way trust mechanism within any community, in that known third parties vouch for newcomers; thus, both sides of the conversation achieve validity in the eyes of the other. Further, norms of communication are informally employed such that the community provides its aggregate opinion on the author (reader, product, etc), serving as a de facto public opinion survey. A message's validity is thereby controlled by the reading public through feedback to ensure that the author's side of the conversation "stays honest."
IMHO, the guys closed with what for me is the real reason for business blogging's being: "engaging the customer in the product feedback cycle is the key to the longevity of blogging." Flip that on its head and you arrive at the conclusion that engaging the customer in a conversation on product development via blogging will become key in any company's longevity. I asked them about this later as they signed my personal copy of their book, and they agreed that introducing the customer into the product development cycle, from concept and design thru to testing and acceptance, is what will create a sustainable competitive advantage for those companies with 1) the vision to see how blogging can entirely change interaction with their customers, and 2) the ability to skillfully implement a blogging program that is not subsequently derailed by attempts to turn it into an overt PR channel or other mechanism for "controlling" interactions with customers.
And there you have it -- why I blog in the first place.
