March 2005

It’s Easter Sunday. So I think it is okay to blog today — about love.

Awhile back, I challenged you all to consider a concept called corporate love — something I believe must be at the foundation of CRM if it is ever to be a meaningful corporate strategy. Customers will spot fake CRM a mile away.

Many challenged back that this is not easy to execute in the world of big companies. To which I said: “if it were easy, they wouldn’t need us.”

But as marketers and as PR specialists, we have a special responsibility.

Sure we need to provide information about the products … about the company behind the products … and about the leaders behind the company.

But if we stop there, we have missed the opportunity to engage in the conversations that are happening in the marketplace. The conversations are going on in the marketplace, whether we engage or not. Sadly, many companies fail to engage.

Consider for a moment the conversation that Steve Kayser, PR Director at Cincom Systems, has started in the company’s twice-a-month eNewsletter — Expert Access.

For me, it is a conversation that shows the true power of corporate PR working in partnership with humanity.

From the corporate point of view, it was a way for Cincom to support one of its software clients — the Christian Childrens Fund. Among other things, Cincom allows its employees to use payroll deduction to make it easier to contribute to CCF. Steve and CEO Tom Nies took it a step further and used the corporate bully pulpit to create a conversation of love.

Betty Ford, VP at CCF wrote to Cincom: “Just wonderfully awesome - a work of art!!! Congratulations, we are so very proud and I’m sending this link to the entire Marketing and Donor Services team and then sending it out world wide. Thank you so much for all you have done to help us. Thank you again for being such an outstanding partner with CCF. We appreciate every thing you do for us. After this one is published, how about coming back in six months and we can do another one on the long term interventions that we are working on now. I think people would like to hear about how the money was spent.Looking forward to your “next” article. “

Steve is a PR master worth emulating as you head out into the work world.

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I’ve been working on a project for my classes and now wonder what value this may have in the business blogging world.

See an example of one I’ve created to expose students to various writers on the Web. Writers :: Combined posts of various writers on the net. The blog includes excerpts from various “Journalism, Copywriters, Direct Marketing, Speechwriters, PR, (and) Marcom” authors.

Aggregator blogs.

The aggregator is like a harvester or collector. It goes out, automatically, and takes excerpts from other blogs or news sites with RSS feeds. Then, those excerpts are automatically posted in the new blog. That is what the “Writers” blog does. It goes out to the eleven blogs listed under “Writer Post Archives” or “About Each Author/Site” and then republishes those excerpts in the “Writers” blog.

With the rising adoption of RSS (and the conversations we’ve had about it here), I wonder, “Does this type of blog show promise for some business sites? Intranet? Extranet?”

Consider this possible integration. You have a travel agency. Using tools like Yahoo! News - RSS to create custom feeds of news articles by “your search term(s)” and target particular countries or regions. The blog then becomes one linked section of your site.

The downside? Some news may lead to competitors. But, is that bad? Comparisons. Transparency. Would this not exhibit a confidence in your products/services?

A more practical application might be for an internal/intranet blog for you and/or your employees. Password protected from the outside, you custom build your tracked feeds so you can keep up on the latest news and activities of your competitors - new industry trends/developments. Since it is internal, you could enable the ‘comments’ function of a blog and have running discussions among teams working on a particular project. Then, your employees track the ‘comments RSS feed’ of the blog with one simple link (read through any RSS reader) - tracking numerous articles and comments - and you have a great research/brainstorming tool. Or, do you?

Or, to just read and follow customized feeds, a “Feed on Feeds” application might work best. It could still be internal/intranet. See this implementation I created sampling Writer Blogs and Writer Resources. A frames view layout is also available.

The upside of both these options is that the software platforms I used are opensource. Free. Use WordPress or Feed on Feeds. This could be good for a small one-person PR shop to use as one more tool / tactic to offer a client. I think these things - blogs and sites of many kinds - have ‘billable’ potential. But, how much, I don’t know.

So, what do you think? Any applications you can see for this type of ‘business blog’ add-on? There are so many questions spinning in my mind on this. Are any of you developers including this kind of customization/service for your clients? You needn’t name ‘names’.

By the way, thanks to Bill French for help in starting me on this ‘quest’ for another way to press blogs and CMS into service. I always find myself thinking how Bill, Dee and Tara’s companies are doing these things for PR and business. And, I wonder how all of you practitioners might be using these options you are suggesting to clients. So, my question is also aimed at David, Guillaume, Josh, Neville, Octavio and Dale, too.

And forgive me. I did cross post this. Normally I remain quiet and only comment. But, I really want to hear your feedback on this one, please. Thanks.

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