Following the Comments Conversation
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.24, 2008, under Social Media
Friday we looked at how important commenting on blogs can be for your community engagement and lead generation. Some great comments were left on the post, on from Ari Herzog who correctly notes:
However, may I offer a suggestion? I’ve linked my name above to a recent blog post of mine offering advice about why I comment time and time again on certain blogs and not on others — and as you don’t offer me a way to receive follow-up comments, you currently fall in a certain grouping. Check out my advice; and see the comments there.
I’d love to see any responses to my comment here, but as is, I have no way of knowing.
Ari brings up a really important point and one that actually intersects our conversation of strategy with that of the tools that we use. I recently updated to this kick ass Wordpress theme from SamK and hadn’t noticed that I no longer had the capability to allow people to be notified when subsequent comments are made. I just fixed that and you should now be able to receive an email alert to subscribe to the comments of a particular post. Thanks Ari!
Ari brings up some other interesting points in his blog post “ 3 Tips to Keep Me Commenting on Your Blog“, notably the increasing trend towards the following:
- You require me to register as a prerequisite to leaving a comment.
- You prevent me from receiving follow-up comments by email.
- You moderate comments.
Ari and I both agree on #1 and it is a frustration I have with many folks who are deploying Disqus and it looks like I’ve addressed issue number 2. But it looks like Ari and I may differ on #3, which he says:
Third, comment moderation tells me you fear lack of control. Or is it a spam issue and you are trying to prevent comments that smell of solicitation, sex, and scams? If the latter, Blogger and Wordpress (and presumedly other out-of-the-box blog solutions) have built-in or plugin/widget spam trappers. If the former, I must ask: Why moderate?
This is a question I used to get a lot from clients and even today as a corporate blogger. Moderation is NOT about controlling the conversation for me on my personal blog, it is purely a security issue. Of course there are comment spam blockers and they work fairly well, but if you are using any blog platform based on PHP I would advise you to moderate comments because it is the easiest way for hackers to get into your database and inject malicious script. How do I know? It happened to me last month and I spent the past few weeks completely overhauling my site and database…not to mention learning a lot about how comments can lead to hacking.
But security can also come in different forms for a corporation and moderating comments is an important step in preventing abuse of comments and keeping a civil discourse to a conversation. You should never disapprove a comment that slams your company or your product and it is why we have a blogging policy that covers this fact. However, we moderate comments firstly to prevent security issues and secondly to keep the blogging environment a safe place for our community. We will never allow threatening or leud comments to be posted by people looking to discredit our organization or even our community members, hence moderation. Obviously this depends on the industry you are in, but it is always important to have a healthy arena of discussion.
Blog Comments Drive Community Engagement
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.21, 2008, under Social Media
One thing we forget as we set up our blogs, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn groups and more is one really simple way to help engage with your community AND drive business leads: commenting on other blogs! Yes, it is not a dead activity, in fact with FriendFeed and BackType a simple comment on a blog post can really help you communicate with many different people.
A nearly real-time example happened in my corporate life this week when my alerts sent me to a blog post entitled “ Bad News for Ixia, Spirent and Agilent“. Those happen to be our main competitors so the headline was certainly juicy, but in reality it was discussing price versus value and how our customers must look at both to determine what truly is ‘too expensive’. Check out the comments:
blog comments
My goal was to be fully transparent, talk about the subject at hand, not promote our company, but to engage readers of this blog so that they could have a conversation with us if they so choose. A simple way to introduce our blog to other folks, not to mention a community resource we use…be honest, provide value and give folks a way to connect with you online. Since this comment was posted we’ve had nice traffic from this blog to our website and the average visitor from this blog comment is spending nearly three minutes on our website.
If you are in a corporate communications position remember the power of engaging in conversations outside of your own online world, it will really pay off with enhancing your ROI and IOR.
Social media marketers can - and must - prove ROI
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.20, 2008, under Social Media
Social Media ROI I was lucky enough to be asked by Jennifer Leggio ( @mediaphyter) to provide a guest post for her ZDnet Blog and I chose to discuss the ongoing debate around social media ROI. I took a bit of a different slant and also shared some stats from what we are doing at BreakingPoint.
Check out the article and comment over there rather than here.
Can’t wait to hear what you think.
Why I Love Facebook
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.19, 2008, under Social Media
Connections folks, connections (also, please recognize the sarcasm):
I Love Facebook
Press 1 To Cancel Your Account
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.19, 2008, under Social Media
Ladder The actual words you hear when you call DirectTV are “Press 1 to schedule installation or cancel your account” but for all intents and purposes you only hear one thing. The question you have to ask if you are DirectTV is:
“Why is the option to cancel number one on our list for calling customers?”
Is this just a really easy and friendly way to give customers who are moving to another provider what they need? Certainly we have all searched for ways to cancel accounts which proved difficult, if not impossible. I have another thought however.
Perhaps it is because you sent a technician out to my house on four separate occasions, each time they were told on their work order to NOT bring a 40′ ladder to only find that they needed a…wait for it…40′ ladder.
I’m guessing this happens alot in your installation process and it is only because Time Warner is just as bad that I gave you four shots at my business. You couldn’t get it done and I called your number and all I heard was:
“Press 1 to cancel your account”
Social Media Minute: BUDurl
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.13, 2008, under Social Media, Tools
Been playing around with BUDurl after their developers gave me a heads up to the service. I recorded a quick movie on how I’m using the tool to help me engage better with our community particularly over Twitter. Over time I believe I’ll be able to see significant trends in what interests people on a blog, Twitter or anywhere. There is potential here to also do a targeted Twitter campaign for marketing purposes and track social media ROI…we’ll see.
Let me know what you think and I’m sure we’ll have the developers reading this post so if you want something in the app let them know!
Leaving the Leader
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.12, 2008, under Social Media
Belichick As I enjoyed Boston College’s thorough beating of Notre Dame last weekend I couldn’t help but think about how far Charlie Weis had fallen since his days winning Super Bowls with the Patriots. Perhaps you are not familiar with Charlie or football for that matter, but it strikes me how challenging it is for people when they get out from underneath their mentor and must have success on their own. In this analogous description it was the shadow of Bill Belichick, the Head Coach of the Patriots, but you can apply this to several business instances as well as, I’m sure, your own career…and please don’t forget the music world.
Both main coordinators under Belichick have failed thus far in their efforts to branch out on their own, the other being Romeo Crennel in Cleveland. Why? This post isn’t long enough and this blog is not the appropriate platform for me to analyze the football side of these failures, but there are lessons for all of us when we attempt to move beyond the shadow of a mentor, which is something I’m trying to do in my new position (yes Len, you are my Bill Belichick!). Here is a list I created before I started this new position and I t
hink it is something that resonates for people in the same position. I won’t be sharing with Coach Weis however, since my loyalty to Boston College runs deeper than my ability to be transparent.
Succeeding On Your Own
- Be yourself, not your mentor: Many people see that one management style worked for their former boss and try to emulate, this is a bad idea. You need to remain yourself throughout the process.
- Stay true to yourself: Similar to above, but important now when you are dealing with a new boss and a new team of people. You might be intimidated or perhaps persuaded to go with actions you previously would never have suggested to impress the new people. You start moving away from what made you successful in the first place and you will fail.
- Don’t pin yourself down: When you have done a job for a long time you create habits, some good, others bad. Either way don’t believe that you can just come into a new position and implement the same cookie-cutter plan you used in previous positions. This is the time to break out of your own norm and be original.
- Ask for help: Make sure that you ask your mentor for help, even if now you may be in a competitive position. They know you, they know how you work, how you feel…use that to get good advice from time to time. This will also help ground you!
Finding Common Ground
by Kyle Flaherty on Nov.10, 2008, under Social Media
We talked last week about the constant noise surrounding social media and how people need to simply shut up and actually get some work done. The comments on that post where all dead on and made me realize once again that for most of the people actually involved in marketing, social media is a part of their game plan and they want to figure out what more they can do, discuss their challenges and share their success. We reach a common ground on this topic and that leads to you subscribing to this blog, following me on Twitter, sending me an email and more.
Common ground–> Successful Communications–> Community Engagement–> Business Success
Social media is an easy way to find that common ground faster whether using RSS, Twitter Search, BackType and more. Common ground is an immediate connection you can establish with a person that will create a long sustaining communicative relationship.
What is your personal common ground? Some of mine include:
Each of those helped create a more established online relationship with a person over the weekend. We found common ground. How are you finding common ground with your community of prospects and customers?