A free webinar for corporate bloggers on March 11, 2010.

Learn the newest techniques to attract and engage your readers, customers and leads. Get ideas, see examples and gain valuable insights on how social media benchmarking and actionable metrics can deliver highly qualified leads to your sales department.

In this webinar you will learn the newest techniques for effective blogging and nurturing engagement with both clients and casual readers. You will hear ideas, see examples and get valuable insight into how a benchmarking program can deliver highly qualified content to increase your customer engagement levels.

On March 11, 2010 at 10:30 CET (07:30 Rio de Janeiro / 09:30 London / 11:30 Cairo / 12:30 Moscow / 17:30 Singapore) ends 12:00 CET, you are invited to see how successful corporate bloggers attract, nurture and foster better engagement. Social media expert and speaker Urs E. Gattiker will show you how easy it is to improve your blogging and communication strategies, processes and practices by using the newest blogging and benchmarking techniques to increase your company’s impact on the web.

No matter what size your company, or your industry, this webinar will teach you important and highly effective blogging and social media marketing techniques and will inspire you to create a number of new social media strategies.

Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter are about capturing social media analytics and interpreting them wisely and in context. This webinar reveals the latest trends to gain valuable insight.

Attend this webinar to:
- understand benchmarking and why actionable metrics are important to improving performance
- learn how to develop an analytics program that delivers insight, not hindsight
- learn what you should effectively measure to make strategic decisions
- see how you can effectively leverage ‘push’ and ‘pull’ marketing with your blog
- know which analytics to measure and which ones to put aside
- learn from mini cases of blogs included in the FT ComMetrics Blog Index
- understand why social media and corporate blogging are effective and necessary
- learn how to get started and avoid common beginner’s mistakes

Speaker:
Urs E. Gattiker, Ph.D., is a highly experienced social media enthusiast, author and blogger. He is both a founder and Chief Executive Officer of CyTRAP Labs GmbH. CyTRAP Labs provides corporate governance and social media services to organizations worldwide and its ComMetrics division is a trail blazer in social media analytics (e.g., developing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index – the industry standard for ranking corporate blogs of FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies).

To get your free access to this webinar, please register now:
==>  FREE webinar registration: Benchmark your blog – improve performance => March 11, 2010 at 10:30 CET

Download this document: http://commetrics.com/download/19/

Your advantage
You will receive a benchmarking guide (out of the ComMetrics eBook Series) that will help you develop actionable metrics for your corporate blog and, as importantly, empower you to successfully communicate results based on five Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your blog.

Your bonus
Free subscription to the My.ComMetrics.com Benchmarking Tool – measure and compare blog performance against competitors.

P.S. - Visit My.ComMetrics (register yourself – benchmark your blog(s) => improve performance). You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics or get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Previously in this series we published:
1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03)
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware (2009-07-08)
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right (2009-07-08)

Today we release the last two installments of these tips and lessons. The sixth, and last, post can be read here:
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

In this fifth post, the focus is on commitment, authenticity and managing cultural differences carefully.

Lesson 14: Commit to regularly posting during mid-week
Having several writers makes it easier, but a politician is better off writing their own posts to assure an authentic voice (see Lesson 16 below).

Case study 2: Blogging politicians – how do they measure up?

The saying “out of sight, out of mind,” applies here. Hence, irregular posting makes it more difficult for your readers to remember that a blog provides good information. In the fast-changing blogosphere, an irregular posting schedule like Aviva’s does not seem a good strategy.

Finally, more people are on the Internet during the week than on weekends, so posting regularly during the week (e.g., Tue – Th) is most effective for reaching business and potential subscribers.

Lesson 15: Depth and breadth vs. crowdsourcing
Outsourcing is en vogue – some say it helps bring down the head count, looks good on the books and saves money. To succeed with outsourcing blogging means that you must secure the services of  ‘experts’ and ‘volunteers’ that understand your business, as this example illustrates:

Case study: eBookers or how to skip the ropes

But will these experts be as motivated as your staff, providing value for money to your current and potential customers? Can one assure consistent quality as well as making the company more personable? Will you trust others to be your voice on the web and if you do, is this a viable strategy?

Surely outsourcing blogging content fails to give the company an authentic voice (see Lesson 16 below). As importantly, to assure depth and breadth means checking up and making sure that those posts not meeting these criteria are either improved or simply not published – a time-consuming and, therefore, costly option. In today’s competitive environment, learning from and relating to customers is an opportunity that cannot be missed.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com – benchmark your blog – improve your score – sign-up for FREE

Lesson 16: Authentic voice makes a big difference
An effective blog represents corporate policy, strategy and viewpoints. Hence, people need to be authentic.

Therefore, while having text vetted by the legal crew as well as the PR folks makes it all a bit more sanitized, it also removes much of what may raise interest readers. This does not mean that legal issues do not matter but it needs to be personable to get and keep people interested.

Of course, unless your CEO has the passion, desire, time and dedication to commit to frequently blogging and curate the comments, this should be avoided at all costs. That being said, there are countless examples of brilliant CEO blogs from people who love to write and share their insights. A great example is Jonathan Schwartz’s – CEO of Sun, now Oracle – blog. But either do it right or don’t go there.

Lesson 17: Culture, language and medium – editors should apply
Whatever the language of a blog, many of its readers will have a different first language. In turn, one should consider this when writing for a global social media audience.

P.S. – Not every CEO will come across successfully on video => CEO webcasts on YouTube – will it turn them into megalomaniacs?.

Takeaways

Authentic voice is key – outsourcing blog posting is not an option.
Commitment matters – regular AND relevant posts and response to comments keeps your readers interested.
Slang or humor are out – people whose first language is not the one used on a corporate blog will otherwise be lost.
Act locally, think globally – while you are on vacation many of your faraway readers are working, so assure posting during holidays. It is worth the effort.

I will keep it brief, love to dialogue more in the comments. What is your take? Please share.

Previously in this series we published:
1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03)

Today we release the next two installments of these tips and lessons, the fourth of which can be read here:
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

Corporate bloggers should follow these lessons to save on resources, money and improve blogging effectiveness. It actually takes little effort but the results are astonishing if you correct r completely avoid these mistakes.

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Lesson 8: Host blog on corporate domain
Most corporations’ main pages have a relatively high Google PageRank (ranking range from 0 to 10, the higher the better). Besides brand recognition and reputation management purposes, this is one more reason why the blog should be hosted under the corporate domain. Advantages include:

a) benefiting from the main page’s Google PageRank,
b) being easier to find for stakeholders, and
c) contributing to and receiving traffic from the main page.

Following the above strategy will result in the blog starting with a higher Google PageRank than it would otherwise get. If one cannot follow the above approach, one has to pay the price as Volvo (212.181.8.238/webbplatser/vbeb/default.aspx) and Swisscom (swisscomnature.blueblog.ch) illustrate.

Lesson 9: Make finding the blog on the corporate website easy
This seems obvious but often it fails to work properly. Nokia does this smartly and effectively (see below). Here, regardless of the visitor’s geographic location, the blog section features prominently on the main website and once one clicks on it, finding the blog one is interested in is simple.

Unfortunately, many corporate blogs use a different approach that is far less user-friendly. For instance, on a visit to the GE corporate website, one will not find a quicklink to a list of all the company’s blogs. Instead, one must search and dig quite a bit to find what one came for. Why make it difficult when easy does it better?

Lesson 10: Make sure variations of the blog’s URL work
Not always do links to the blog’s main page work properly, especially in cases where users type an alternate version of the link, such as:

- www.HowTo.ComMetrics.com instead of HowTo.ComMetrics.com,
- www.blog.Daimler.com instead of blog.Daimler.de, or
- gereports.ge.com instead of gereports.com.

Check the above links for yourself to see which ones work – at least one will give you an error. This is an oversight that can easily be fixed and one wonders why any organization that maintains a corporate blog would overlook this issue.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com – benchmark your blog – improve your score – sign up for FREE

Lesson 11: Once it is chosen, keep your blog’s URL
Toyota Open Road Blog, a blog with a nice ComMetrics footprint (the lower the score the better your blog ranks within the same category – apples vs. apples), lost a lot of ground when its advertising people decided to change its URL and move the blog to the Toyota website.

In this case, the Google PageRank immediately dropped to 0. Giving up a 6 Google PageRank (some weeks it was a 7) just to move a blog might fit the corporate strategy, but is this  effective in terms of corporate best-practice?

Once you choose a URL stick with it and don’t let any advertising expert or strategy guru tell you otherwise. This will save you time and effort in the long-term. And as Nokia and others demonstrate, any blog can be easily linked to and featured on the global website for people to find quickly and easily.

Okay, now it’s your turn. What techniques you have used to improve your blogging effectiveness? What was your most successful “let’s do this and move on” tactic? If you have come close to resolving these challenges smartly, what did you do? Which of the above four strategies is your favorite? Which one do you think is just baloney? It’s okay – be honest. We can take it. Thanks much.

P.S. – You may find our next set of ropes to skip of interest as well: 4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right (2009-07-08).

Imagine your boss has just told you that budget cuts necessitate cutting social media expenses and you might lose your job shortly. In a semi-desperate move you suggest that she give you another three months to show what a difference you can make for the company by revamping the corporate blog.

Can we help? Absolutely! After publishing the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs, we came to the conclusion that it might be helpful to share some of the insights we have gained.

Today we release the first installments of these tips and lessons, the second of which can be read here:
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03)

The next set will be published July 8:
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain or home you choose – beware
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Lesson 1: Ropes to skip – learn from others
There is no good reason to make the mistakes we discuss below and in subsequent posts. Just read these rules and decide carefully.

ComMetrics – thanks to input and advice from others we have come up with the 20+best WordPress plugins to make our lives easier; and
Daimler – Why did Beck’s not ask Daimler before starting an expensive revamp of its blog?

Lesson 2: Define the type of blog you want
Who or what is it supposed to provide information about? Delivering information to investors is different than blogging about a non-profit organization’s neighborhood initiative.

Dell‘s investor blog, DellShares, serves shareholders, while Direct2Dell offers customers a way to find out about new products and provide feedback.

Dell’s blogs deliver different fare and their success speaks volumes about the company’s smart blogging strategy.

Lesson 3: Define the target audience
The question is, are those that read Renault’s Formula One racing team blog would be the kind of people you want to reach out to. Hence, who is your target audience – sports fans, customers, potential clients, regulators, donors or someone else? Some of your audience may fall into more than one category, such as sports fans who have and will continue to purchase Renault’s cars.

The challenge of finding your target audience is nicely illustrated by:

General Electric – Blogging for shareholders, creditors and financial analysts

General Electric’s blog is one example where institutional investors and shareholders can get information they might not be able to get elsewhere. But if you are interested to find out about its research and what future products it has in store, GE Global Research Blog will serve you better.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com – sign up for FREE and compare your performance to the Renault F1 team or UPS racing blogs – we’ll help you gain the upper hand.

Lesson 4: Determine what the focus of two-thirds of the content will be
People sign up to get a blog’s RSS feed because the content looks of interest to them on a first or second visit. Straying far from the topic is not always appreciated by one’s audience, considering their many other time commitments and options for news sources. So staying on target is key when it comes to delivering unique content.

UPS racing in the US – get the latest results and box news
Renault F1 team – all about the races – from news about the Red Bull team to McLaren Mercedes – this is what you get

Both cases above show that these blogs provide racing news, so choose Renault for Formula One or UPS for NASCAR news. Somebody who is not a car racing fan is definitely not a targeted reader for these blogs, which is fine as long as it remains of interest to the target audience.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Would you have addressed any of these challenges differently? Did I miss something in one of the three points addressed? Do you agree or disagree? Give us shout-out, whether for joy or frustration, but please share your thoughts. Thank you.

P.S. - Continue with our next set of ropes to skip: 2) Lessons  5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go (2009-06-03).

May has been a really busy month for us. As the cartoon to the left illustrates, we talked with Dogbert and convinced him to help us come up with some nice additional features for your dashboard.

Our work with the folks at the Financial Times has also yielded satisfying results. You can get more information on our collaboration in the following posts:

- FT ComMetrics Blog Index published
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index released: KISS the blog-bride
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: How we found you
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: The winners are
- FT ComMetrics Blog Index: Just do it – right

Incidentally, to be notified about new features, tricks and tools first, why not enter your e-mail here and get on our VIP list:

Here is what is coming your way: My.ComMetrics.com real-time trace updates or, who is Googling you – creepy or useful?

Alerts can be a good thing. For instance Ziggs.com alerts you when someone looks up your CV online.

Real-time trace updates from My.ComMetrics.com are similar to Google Alerts or those from Ziggs. As the subscriber, you get informed when someone decides to add your blog to their dashboard. Hence, your blog’s performance is now being compared with that attained by another blog that covers a subject area similar to yours.

Additionally, the real-time trace alert provides the recipient with such information as:

• View the vital statistics for http://daniel.shortens.net/ – by logging on you can see some of this ‘other’ blog’s performance indicators (i.e. how well this corporate blog is performing)
• Trace http://daniel.shortens.net/ – logging on automatically adds this blog to those we trace on your behalf so you can find out who is doing better.

Please let us know your reactions and comments about this; what do you think? Are there other features you would like? Thanks for sharing.

To see how well your blog strategy works register your blog here:
My.ComMetrics.com - benchmark your blog – improve your score – sign up for FREE.

You can also follow us on Twitter  MyComMetrics.

PS. Find out how My Tools can get you the vital blog statistics delivered the way that suits you the most – save time, money and blog more effectively.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wisdom, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will make a beaten path to your door.”

A good and insightful saying, to be sure, and the modern equivalent would have to be convincing the boss or a sceptic of the value of social media or blogging.

While blogging may be an effective way to reach many of the company’s customers and suppliers, and reduce customer calls if the help or FAQ section delivers, that may not be enough to convince a boss who neither reads nor writes a blog.

Hence, one needs to demonstrate that current and potential clients are making use of these technologies. Finding competitors or industry leaders that blog will also help convince a budget committee to assign a project manager and get started.

The  2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index rankings can help you build a case for using social media in your organization (see the statistics at a glance at FTindex results). It illustrates how the largest companies are doing in comparison to their competitors and other large companies around the globe. It provides a tool for tracking success through hard numbers: how big is your company’s social media footprint? In particular, how does it stack up against your competitors’ ComMetrics Footprint and so forth.

Accordingly, deriving value from non revenue-generating activities means demonstrating the sometimes hidden values of blogging and social media activities. This is what the FTindex results can help you with. Findings indicate how blogs are being used to improve consumer relations, recruiting efforts and handling a takeover without ruffling too many feathers.

Download white paper (expanded version of 2004-05-14 FT article)

You can also get a complete report with the results as a free download (just register, and voilà):

Log in ➡ Download the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index report

Additional posts and download of additional materials provided as PDF files:

Download press release
Download Financial Times case study
FT ComMetrics Blog Index published
Financial Times May 14 – by Urs E. Gattiker – Corporate blogs: New way to engage with stakeholders

Relevant blog metrics for diary, personal and business blogs
Please subscribe now so you can claim your personal and/or corporate blog AND trace those that you want to compare yourself to.
For Twitter, please use #hashtag ➡ #FTCBI

We have tried to keep our Alpha users and the other readers of this blog posted on our progress toward releasing a Beta version of our My.ComMetrics.com blog benchmarking tool.

Things are coming along nicely and the Beta release is just around the corner. In the meantime, we have opened a Twitter account to keep our users informed about:

- new features, and
- progress

So far we have succeeded in keeping the number of tweets down to one or two each week, as promised in one of our early tweets:

MyComMetrics: Dear, reminder, this account keeps you POSTED about software releases/changes on http://My.ComMetrics.com 1or 2 tweets each week #tools2watch

Almost two months have passed since that message was posted and the account is enjoying a steady growth of followers.

My.ComMetrics.com bio on Twitter

Usually the messages we send out look something like the examples listed below. They focus on the web-based software, including providing links to new features or showing screen-shots of the results:

MyComMetrics: Simplified our offerings, 3 service levels is what we offer,still FREE for testers http://howto.commetrics.com… #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: Fixed the descriptions and the sign up procedure so people have an easier time to understand http://short.to/ke2 #tools2watch #smMetrics
MyComMetrics: NOW change profile,get alerts when stats change & start benchmarking against YOUR blog => view image => http://snipr.com/abycz #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: UPDATE | login | http://My.ComMetrics.com | click Profile http://ad.vu/9x4t | change info & customise ALERTS http://ad.vu/9x4t #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: UPDATE | login | http://My.ComMetrics.com | click Profile| blog rankings & key metrics change | get ALERT http://ad.vu/rd73 | #tools2watch

Exclusive Newsletter for Subscribers
Our monthly newsletter appears every four to six weeks, something which associates and Alpha testers are automatically subscribed to receive. It keeps people informed about the most important stuff and alerts them to developments in the blogosphere that might make a splash.

The first issue was: This Month in Blogging Effectiveness – January 20, 2009

The next one will be coming your way soon: This Month in Blogging Effectiveness – February 26 2009 (watch your inbox for it!)

Why we love our Alpha users
We believe that Alpha users are special people; they test our tools and provide us with extremely valuable feedback about how it works.

In return, our Alpha users deserve special treatment, which means that they get the full experience without paying a cent. Even better, people who are Alpha users, AND actively use the tool get a free subscription when we release Beta version 1.0 sometime this Spring. In order to qualify for the freebie, you need to complete a free Alpha-user registration and start testing our tool as much as possible. Why? Because it will help you increase the bang you get for your buck when you blog. We are in the process of packing more oomph into our tool. In turn, this will allow you to track various blogs and see what works and what fails. And that’s just the start.

Various subscription plans on offer – See how they work
=========>
Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. Please register yourself for free or pass on this link to some of your friends so they can benchmark themselves – to get better. Once we release Beta things will change, except for Alpha users: they get a free ride. C’est la vie.

Enough about what I think and feel, what is your take? Share your thoughts below; they are what matter most.
=========>

Measuring impact with only a single coarse tool when it comes to social media is dangerous
We look at various statistical indicators to see whom the crowd is following on the Internet and what this means for the brand.

There is no single metric for ranking the popularity and/or influence of your Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) blog, your company’s page on Facebook, monitoring Twitter conversations and so on. There are two principle ways of ranking social media:

- traffic (which is not a term with automatic meaning) and

- through the number of links to a page – thes have generally been used as sign of influence.

Nevertheless, blog content depends on the quality of the blog or the social media channel in which the original story or post appears. These, in turn, depend on the integrity of the writer who checks the facts and makes sure that the material is correct.

Nevertheless, in the social media domain,

• popularity
• crowd scoring

have become ever more important when assessing the influence of a blog or a social media campaign.

Essentially, similar to citation analysis for research, most scoring systems assessing the popularity or backlinks for a blog are focusing on the number of times a blog post is linked to or referred to by another blogger.

However, a report by the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the International Mathematical Union and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics states in a recent press release to a report warning over science citations:

While having a single number to judge quality is indeed simple, it can lead to a shallow understanding of something as complicated as research. Numbers are not inherently superior to sound judgments.

Get the full report here:

Measuring Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook & blogs with a single metric is dangerous (416.9 KB)