The flurry of discussion around the ROI of corporate blogging is fascinating at several levels. Instinctively, I want numbers. I want to know the extent to which blogging adds value to the business otherwise what’s the point? That seemed to be the thrust of Werner Vogel’s initial thinking in the Scoble/Shel v Amazon debate. Since then, Werner has amplified his thinking with great skill. But sometimes, conventional metrics are irrelevant.
Over the months, I’ve come to realise the pursuit of conventional, finance based metrics is probably the wrong approach – at least in the short term. Let’s take a step back. Corporations don’t blog, people do. And therein is the start of the problem. So often, we abstract the human element of business into statistics that only tell a fraction of the story. And, I think, we measure the wrong things. I find for instance that marketing is averse to measuring campaign success. Why? Because creativity and hard facts are difficult to reconcile in conventional terms. But it is possible to measure effectiveness in other ways. What for instance is wrong with developing qualitative metrics about the impact on public perception? How does that get translated into profit? Do we have any clue about how to make those connections in meaningful ways?
I know this is important from work I did a couple of years ago around customer satisfaction. The issue wasn’t whether customers were satisfied, but the manner in which service delivery was perceived and acted upon. We would never have discovered certain issues without providing survey respondents with a feedback mechanism. It quickly became apparent that the stats, while interesting and comforting at one level could never disclose underlying issues of importance to a relatively small – i.e. vocal – group. these are the potential influencers of current and future customers. Satisfy this group, and the business is protected. Ignore them, and the business is in peril.
Very few corporations seem to understand the importance of employee churn or employee satisfaction. Corporations know the value of hiring a great CXO but beyond that? A friend of mine writes extensively about human capital management and after more than 5 years scribbling around the topic remains of the view that ‘we’ have yet to come up with metrics that adequately reflect the value people deliver in the workplace. I agree.
Everyone says they want to build intimate relationships with customers but how many achieve that? If you don’t have great relationships with the people who make up the business, how can you expect to have great relationships with customers, business partners and others that comprise your business ecosystem?
Instead, corporate comfort is drawn from meeting financial analyst expectations around sterile numbers that are the sum of many parts but the analysis of nothing that reflects what makes business successful (or not.) If you accept that as a reasonable hypothesis then does blogging have a place in understanding business ROI? My conclusion is an emphatic yes. At one level for instance, you could regard survey comments of the kind I described above as a form of quasi-blog interaction. That exercise kick started a chain reaction inside the client company which changed service delivery mechanisms for the better – and at very low cost.
We do business with people we trust, not corporations. We do business with brands we recognise as delivering value. Yet brand value itself is an ephemeral concept. It can change in a heartbeat. Remember the Gerald Ratner ‘We sell crap’ gaff? To bring that up to today, the attack on Werner and the stuff that swirled around it could have harmed Amazon’s reputation (and eventually profits.) Werner responded with powerful arguments that took the use of technology discussion forward in a meaningful way. He recognises there is a serious side to this stuff that cannot be ignored. One result – Shel Israel, who initially was highly critical of Werner but had solid suggestions for Amazon has changed his tune. Is this the new humility inside corporations and among individuals? I don’t know. Personally, it was gratifying to see Werner reference certain of my own comments. We made a human connection. That’s important because the continuance of the discussion prompted fresh insights and changes in perception.
I am 100% convinced that within the next 5 years the MySpace generation will bring their social networks to the workplace. They will want to know why corporations are not engaged in the kind of informal conversations that typify blogs. These new generation employees will hunger for knowledge. It is here I see the greatest potential ROI because learning adds value way beyond the things we learn. For instance, as I conclude this post, I’m awaiting an update on Paul Mason’s site about the changing value being delivered in the highly regulated M&A landscape. I wouldn’t have a clue about this unless I read Paul’s stuff.
We are very much at the beginning of this stuff. There’s a lot we don’t know and don’t know how to know. Werner’s initial question led to some terrific thinking around the topic though my only reservation is that in my gut, I want a number. Old habits die hard.
Technorati Tags: blog_marketing, client relationships, client_marketing, ROI
