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I think the real issue boils down to the fact that there are no silver bullets.
Stormhoek did great through blogging? Sure, but are we sure it would help Vinos Jeromin ( http://www.vinosjeromin.com/ -- no affiliation, only an example of smaller wine producer in my area), for example?
Werner questioned whether blogging was relevant to Amazon's business model, and it may not be relevant at all (which, by the way, is not an excuse to be rude).
Maybe what we need are case studies of companies not logging, and trying to understand quantifiable benefits of doing so for them. Explain clearly where it's relevant, where it's not.
As an example, have a look at old (1996 to 1998) books or articles on e-commerce, back when we explained to people how this could change their businesses, but it wasn't for everybody. Deja vu all over again, and all that... ;)
"Naked Conversations 2", maybe?
What are they scared of?
How do we explain that to this winery or any other business...? YOu know, the ones *not* reading blogs and already sold on this way of communicating?
Not easy when a lot of these guys are still trying to decide if being on the web is worth it, but I'm going to keep trying... :)
Maybe this is a biger issue, related to web sites being managed too often by comms people instead of by marketeers or sales (as in flashy vs. useful)?
Just look at most car companies sites, especially the ad-hoc ones for new launches...
Yeah, I'm learning that most people in business simply don't understand how to best use the Web. Most business people don't, for instance, understand how search engines work. If they don't understand even that then they won't understand why Flash sites generally aren't as good as just plain old well written ugly old HTML sites. There's a reason MySpace is #2 and that it isn't Flashy.
With any luck, the web admin for the spanish winery will look at his logs, find this conversation and ask for advice. I'll give ideas, cheap...
Another interesting aside - Werner talks about 'the answer he wants' - well if he can say exactly what it is then maybe the answer can be found?
In my own personal experience the business case for blogging is cast iron solid. As for flash sites see my post yesterday http://www.geoffjones.com/2006/03/nevada-sports...
My own experience with Amazon amd customer relations is dreadful - I changed my email address and all my preceeding 3 years data was lost without warning.
You asked-"Does blogging matter?"
YES, definately yes.
Here's proof:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detai...
Foldera launched with strictly a blog marketing strategy. Microsoft Officelive launched with a more traditional marketing strategy.
Check out the charts side by side.
The first chart uptrend was Michael Arringtons post. The second uptrend was your post.
Want more proof that blogging works- click on this link again tomorrow.
:)
I rest my (your) case.
Best,
Richard Lusk
CEO/Foldera
http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/30/alexaholic-sh...
Alexaholic can be a very convincing tool.
I don't think I was as aggressive as Werner but I had some of the same questions, and they weren't answered convincingly either at the discussion (which was great, incidentally, I don't want you to think it wasn't a good presentation) or in the follow-up posts that either you or Shel have made. I don't disbelieve any of the citations you have made, I just don't feel like they complete the argument that blogging is a great approach for, well, everybody. It's worked well for certain businesses, no question. But I think you should spend more time on where it hasn't worked, and for what businesses, and come up with some supportable arguments as to why that is. Because there are a lot of blogs out there, and a limited number of success stories. And in some respects, when you talk about the numbers explosion in the blogosphere, it begs the question as to just how many blogging plumbers can find success in the field. When I mentioned the issue to Shel, he just kept hitting me with those anecdotes from above. Awesome, I'm happy for all those guys--but that's not an answer.
Great talk, and I'm glad you are taking the opportunity to expand on the discussion... and I still think it would be a great show to get you and Shel in a room with Nick Carr and started on this subject. :)
Even then, you cannot extrapolate from one company to another, because blogging is intensely personal. What would be the ROI to Amazon of more fully embracing blogging? Hard to say, honestly. Fpr example, who knows what pent-up ideas and advice might exist out there in their customer base? Who knows what passionate people there are who would be more likely to share their ideas via a blog, where other people can see them, than through a customer service form?
When you think of blogging as social network building, as I do, the investment you are making is in increasing the number of people connected to your organization. A bigger network has more potential value. Should companies at least start actively nurturing and expanding their networks through the use of a tool that is outstanding for just that? I think so!
And, how about the long term effects? Do you have evidence that it matters in the long run?
The bottom line is the responsibility lies with the persuader, in this case Shel and Robert. If Werner wasn't satisfied, then, by definition, some different methods were required. Like maybe providing different types of evidence that will appeal to different people. And if the person you're trying to persuade can't take a joke or be civil, well, there's a way to handle that too...
I've read a bit on this subject now, and it seems to me like Werner was treating this as a sales presentation. I know from experience that sales presentations full of anecdotal evidence tend to be BS. Multi-level marketing anyone?
The question at hand is about focus. It's not about whether a blog _can_ help a company, but about _how_ to use the blog to help a company. The answer is going to be different for each company, falling into common styles of company blog.
Early web advertising saw a rush for everyone to get banner ads in place. Once that rush passed, questions about effectiveness began to be asked.
The e-commerce world has enough experience to be sceptical of anything that comes without a metric. You would make a much more valuable contribution by suggesting what types of metrics could be used to verify effectiveness.
I think this sentence, on its own, shows why, Werner was right to give you guys a rough ride and demand some real figures. The actual first line of the story you link to is this:
"South African producer Stormhoek has doubled sales of its wine with a campaign directed at the blogging community."
Can you see the difference? Stormhoek didn't double its sales through blogging: it increased them by marketing to bloggers. That's a very, very different claim. The only actual indication of how many bottles that were sold via blogging is the 100 bottles sent out via Hugh - of 100,000 sold. How many of those 100 bottles were turned into further sales? How many people who bought Stormhoek did so because they'd heard of it via a blog? And how much more significant was the fact that Sainsburys, Asda, Oddbins, Majestic, Waitrose and Somerfield - all major UK wine sellers - started stocking the brand?
That's what Werner means by a lack of hard figures. Now Amazon has a LOT of hard figures about its customers. It knows everything you've bought, and how many things (and what) you've bought after a recommendation. It knows who your friends are, because they bought you things from your wishlist. It knows what you sold through its marketplace, it knows if and what complaints you made. THOSE are hard facts, and from them Amazon can tell a much greater range of things about its customers than any amount of blogs would.
See, it just doesn't work.
Answer the question though. Why would people prefer to hear from Amazon over the authors who sell on Amazon and the other customers at Amazon?
For every success story attributed to blogging, I can easily name another success story that's got nothing to do with blogging -- for instance, iPod, Harry Potter books, I can go on and on.
I don't think Robert meant to say that blogging will take companies to the commercial promised land. Blogging is one of the many marketing tools. Some marketing execs swear by the Sunday-afternoon infomercials, some will avoid them like the plague. But one thing is for certain -- blogging costs almost nothing (well, your time), whereas infomercials cost more than a pretty penny to produce.
For larger companies the benefits are different. There is already an established channel for communicating with the market and a reputation built upon these channels. Blogs amplifies an existing message so the benefits are harder to measure. A blog is unstructured and spontaneous so it's impact does not lend itself to formal metrics that traditional marketing campaigns are built around.
As Elizabeth says above, it's best to think of blogs as an oppportunity to communicate on a personal level with your most engaged customers. It is also a way to reach out to potential customers by building the number of connections in your company's social network. That is the true value of a corporate blog and until someone can agree on a price for a social network ($2 billion for Facebook anyone?) it'll be difficult to put an exact ROI on a corporate blog.
You also forgot to mention it became the biggest political bubble in American history. The scream heard around the world. It did get him in the Chair of the DNC, much to the delight of Republicans everywhere.
I didn't represent blogging very well and didn't back up the thesis
More of same. You spent a whole book of meaningless case studies all hobbled together, to prove what you deem to be self-evident. No reason why you would suddenly start to kick in with some real meaty numbers. It's but a cult, if you question or demand hard stats, you don't "get it".
But boy, for a PR Pro, Shel sure has a habit of getting stuck in the muck. That Nick Carr jab was classless.
But Werner Vogels hit nail on head. Bravo. With this guy as CTO, maybe I should apply at Amazon.
"Instead they appeared shell-shocked that anyone actually had the guts to challenge the golden wonder boys of blogging and not accept their religion instantly..."
If you want to present to groups like the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Amazon and whoever else then you'd better be able to answer real world questions and not spin those questions to the rest of the world as "being treated rudely".
Disagree or ask questions, and you are rude or a troll. I know that game. ;)
Two nights ago I attended (via my computer) the LIFT conference in Geneva where you (and my good friend Hugh) presented. Today I'm going out to buy your book. Watching yours and Hugh's presentations felt like the equivalent of getting a four year degree in blogging. Very inspiring. Very insightful. Very much worth emulating. The thing that inspired me the most was that you're one of those guys that wants everyone around you to be great. I find that so refreshing. You don't have secrets. And you don't build yourself up by leaving everyone else in the dark and keeping them small. Perhaps that is what bothers Amazon, nobody can be bigger (hence the name) and know anything that they don't already know. (At least that's my take on their attitude.) Big thanks for the inspiration. As a newbie blogger and business owner I applaud you.
And neither you nor Shel has answered what I thought was the best question:
"Why would people prefer to hear from Amazon over the authors who sell on Amazon and the other customers at Amazon?"
You sure are good building up straw man arguments, though, like turning Carr's suggestion of a blogging buddy into a "committee". Makes me wonder why you go ballistic about misleading headlines.
Sheesh!
Boy, that will show them!
I'm an SDE at Amazon.com (look at my site, I've posted that I work there). I don't talk much about my work because I'm not sure what I'm allowed to discuss. So I find it much easier to blog internally because I know that everything is fair game (tools that I'm using, techniques, problems I've run into, etc.). Of course my readership internally is probably lower than my readership externally (which is pretty low because I've come to realize that I'm not a very good writer and I get bored writing long entries. Steve Yegge is my hero when it comes to writing).
A little about what my team does - we decide when something ships. But not completely. We are given a soft date we have to meet, and we do our best to meet that date. But sometimes inventory and what not aren't there, and we miss the date. But the website is usually very good about setting expectations.
So we decide when. We see every shipment. So what would my blogging about scalability issues do for the customer experience? They don't care if I can't handle 10 trillion shipments (number drawn at random). They want their stuff. I have a good idea about how some of the information on the website is generated, but I wouldn't talk about it because it is so far away from me. I can't blog about how to pick a better book or how to use the search engine more effectively because I am so far away from those technologies. Me blogging about that is going to be the same as anyone else blogging about it - a user.
It makes sense to me for A9 and AWS to have blogs because they deal with the public. A9 with their OpenSearch initiative. AWS with the services they provide (S3 is awesome guys!). But for my team, what good would be brought to the customer? Now you can respond and say "But you could tell us how you decide when". We could, but we won't. That would require buy off from many other teams. Because we use their data as well. To discuss it would require OK from them.
Now if the discussion was "does Amazon need to provide blogs for authors?", I'm torn. I think we do a good job of collecting feedback with reviews. We have plogs now (although truth be told I turn that off). If you look at any item on the site, you can start a discussion on it (towards the bottom of the page). So would blogs directly help us? Would see something like http://blogs.amazon.com/ make us a better company and more responsive to what our customers want?
It's a good discussion to have. At least I think so...
As for the other underlying bit about Werner being rude, I don't know. I was in a dentist chair for close to 5 hours on Wednesday so I missed the talk :) But I do know that I've been in 2 meetings with him (not a lot I know), and he was very quiet :) He asked a few questions, and we all left with a good understanding of what needed to be done.
Just some random, half coherent thoughts from an Amazon employee who just had lots of dental work done :)
Earthquakes kill 50, injure 800
Rice Concedes 'Tactical Errors' in Iraq
UN Security Council calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment
At least 57 die as Bahrain cruise boat sinks
Iran Test-Fires Missile Able to Duck Radar
Explosion kills Palestinian militant amid spreading violence
4 Israelis killed by suicide bomber at entrance to West Bank
NY releases 9/11 emergency calls
13 Ugandan pupils die in school fire
Now can you explain to me why your self-opinionated A-list genuflection matters to anyone?
Scoble, this is why you are where you are. It's not said often enough that this is the point of blogging, having a conversation and being heard. Good job.
I'm not going to install Windows Media player to listen to audio that would be perfect in mp3 format. Why is the content in proprietary MS-only garbage?
I haven't read your book, so I can't comment on it directly. From what I've read online and my own observations about Amazon.com, I think one reason you got the reaction you did is because Amazon.com has never tried to put a "human face" on its brand.
Granted, there's a tech/media cult that surrounds Jeff Bezos, just like there's one that surrounds Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. However I don't think that Mr. Bezos or his company want him to be seen *as* Amazon.com, nor do they want employees who blog taking on that role.
A big part of Amazon.com's brand identity is that it is *the original .com retailer.* As such it doesn't need or want any of the trappings associated with more traditional retail business models, including a "human face." Instead, Amazon.com is a highly-automated, metrics-driven company and they've chosen to make those qualities defining aspects of their brand identity. Any sort of "personal" interaction with their customers on the part of their employees would dilute the value of these impersonal (but extremely efficient and effective) qualities.
That's my take on it anyway.