BusinessWeek, a while ago, ran a cover story with the title "Blogs will change your business." I agree, not exactly because it is a new trend, but because, it really is shifting power from organizations to individual customers. Brian Lusk of Southwest Airlines is talking about it in this question. Through their corporate blogs, Southwest Airline changed the way they did the business: open seating + early scheduling announcement.
Is it good for the business? Some people might say, thinking "if they didn't have blogs, they didn't need to change all those things." Well, that might be true in part, meaning Southwest didn't need to go through all those pains to change the way they did a business. But, if anyone agree "doing business is about customer satisfaction," then, this is the way to go. Before, there was a very limited channels to listen to the customers, but, with this corporate blog, Southwest listen what the customer wants, and then change themselves to meet those wants.
This is why the new marketing is "conversation". The book quoted "I blogged, You Flamed, We Changed." Not all things customer wants can be changed, but, at least, can be heard.
Southwest case shows a good example and insight what our corporations need to do in advance in the age of social media, and transparent conversation.
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4 comments:
I agree. It's kind of always been about listening to your customers, and blogging can be an efficient way of doing that.
I don't know if I'm missing something, but to me it really seems to be that simple... The new technology just increases the efficiency of the communication, so I don't really have that much to add to what Hoh said.
I definitly agree that listening to your customers is an important part for all companies. However, i'm still not sure that bloggs is a good tool for communication. I have a very hard time imagining why i would ever go and read a company blog. And to use comments to a blog entry as a means of communication also feels unnatural for me.
Perhaps i'm just not used to it, but to me the best way of communicating and discussing something is still the forum. It has a well organized structure and with good moderators it's a breeding ground for discussion.
I'd like to se companies use bloggs as a tool to publish news about their company, and then refer the discussions to a forum.
I agree that user of the blog would increse. An importanting is information which contains exactitude. The firms need to consider interaction between customers with correct information to keep their customers.
For me, I'm not interest in comment of blog a lot bot if an informations are useful then I read a tag carefully. When a firm decides to use blog strategy for their marketing, they should think about trust.
I agree that the future of marketing is "conversation". It's always been about the customers needs and wants, and what better way to find out about them than opening a line of communication. Also by communicating with customers you connect with them on a more personal level which establishes trust. Blogs is definitely a way to go and in any case it's a good entry point into more social media oriented marketing. Also it creates a more dynamic content on your website which makes customers return.
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