March 31st, 2006
What Is the Quantifiable ROI of Corporate Blogging?
Now that Google has turned marketing into a quantifiable, profitable activity with measurable ROI, how is it that business blogging gets away with the same soft arguments that boosters of brand advertising typically use (and for which they have rightly been taken to task)?
The blogosphere is abuzz because Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, apparently mopped up the floor with naked conversationalists Robert Scoble and Shel Israel for not being able to quantify the ROI of corporate blogging.
Was Werner rude to Scobel and Shel? WHO CARES! If you’re writing a gossip column, then go to town. I’m interested in the business issue here.
Scoble attempts a response to the question about quanitifiable ROI, but without much success:
I totally forgot to mention that big companies like Boeing (Randy’s journal is a blog done by an executive there) , General Motors (Bob Lutz, an exec at GM has a blog), and Wells Fargo (which recently started blogging on its history) are seeing enough of a reason to start a blog (and continue doing them, even after the first year). The teams at Boeing and GM say they are pleased with the response and effect of their blogging and plan to continue doing them.
But, if you don’t like this approach, just visit Tom Moertel’s blog where he talks about his favorite coffee shop in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. When I visited that shop myself the owner raved about what blogging had done for his business. It turned his little coffee shop into one with an international presence. Thanks to search engines like A9, Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Oh, and he said he never got written up in the press before blogging, but now that’s a regular happening.
See, maybe that’s why I wasn’t able to defend blogging from a numbers point of view. To me this is a people business. One where raw numbers don’t matter. One where getting eight guys together in a Swiss Chalet can turn into tens of thousands of users literally overnight with doing nothing more than one post.
How, in a post-AdWords, can Scoble refuse to “defend blogging from a numbers point of view” and instead say it’s a “people business”? That’s hardly the approach that made Google into an advertising powerhouse.
And let’s be clear about something else: Case studies about small business success with blogging DO NOT mean there is (yet) a compelling dollars and cents case for blogging by big corporations.
Now you can argue that corporate blogging makes intuitive sense just like brand building makes intuitive sense. But, rudely stated or not, big corporations have every reason to question whether the risks of blogging (which Howard Rice outlines well — via Nick Carr) outweigh the potential rewards.
Topics: Blogging | Blogs | Brand Advertising
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Blogging works. But often I’m not sure even top bloggers know why, and convincing skeptics is often difficult with out facts to back up claims of blogging success. There are, however, three very tangible reasons why blogging is so effective:…
I’m a hard assed retired accountant who blogs about innovation for professional accountants. I asked the same question a long time ago. The question is impossible to answer in immediately recognisable empirical terms. It’s one of the reasons HR hates finance. We need new metrics.
[…] Here’s my advice if you’re listening. A little research assessment and creativity could go long way. I would recommend researching Amazon’s blogging opportunity with an open mind and including marketing, add PR, SEO, sales and brand reputation into your equation. How much of an investment of your company time or money would that be? Give it about 200 hours. Look at the bloggers influencing your customers. Look at bloggers who uses your services. Estimate the search marketing value of Amazon blogging. Evaluate all the opportunities where bloggers mention Amazon or competing brands by name. Think about what (dare I say) an even closer connection with your customer would mean in terms of better products, customer satisfaction, client satisfaction. I think all of these are examples of data that could lead you and some strategic folks at Amazon to concoct some possible blogging and blogger relations strategies. What is the potential risk for Amazon? What is the potential return for Amazon?Quote from Robert Scoble’s Post, Much ado about blogging (Scoble, you didn’t answer the question): Where I gave them stuff like “blogging doubled sales at Stormhoek winery, according to its CEO.” Or “Munjal Shah, CEO of Riya, says blogging is very important to his new company.” Or “Axosoft raised more than $14,000 in just a few days with nothing more than a few links on some blogs.” Or “Foldera got more than one million signups for its service in 17 days by doing nothing more than talking to six bloggers.” Or, a tailor in the UK saw his sales go up by 10x by doing a blog. That probably wasn’t well enough communicated, or it wasn’t the kind of answer that would convince Werner. That means I need to go back and do some more homework or at least learn to communicate better while being interrupted by an executive with strongly formed opinions. Putting the gossipy threads aside, this post by Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0, trying his hardest not to be an “Old Media defender” gets into the heart of the issue by asking What Is the Quantifiable ROI of Corporate Blogging? Scott’s summary is … Now you can argue that corporate blogging makes intuitive sense just like brand building makes intuitive sense. But, rudely stated or not, big corporations have every reason to question whether the risks of blogging (which Howard Rice outlines well — via Nick Carr) outweigh the potential rewards. Scott raises a good point in this, corporations should “question” whether the risks are worth the potential reward. That’s a responsible way to approach corporate blogging because part of the equation in corporate blogging is risk. However, equating blogging arguments to brand building arguments sells blogging a bit short. Maybe the anecdotal evidence offered by Scoble isn’t enough for a serious C level professional to “institutionalize blogging” but I think the fact that blogging is providing some very measurable benefits for some companies, is enough to warrant a serious assessment of the opportunity. […]
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